9/17/12
He slid his feet from inside the Velcro fastened strap of the heavy black plastic slippers and pressed both heels down. As he stretched his legs out long, he rested with his feet smooshed on top of the three long white stripes that line the slipper’s straps. He couldn’t recall where or when he acquired the pair of socks he wore that hung loose from his calloused feet. It left him with an odd feeling every time. The stretched waves of the open ends of the socks refused to embrace the contours of his ankle, leaving a cold awkward space between borrowed cloth and hair and skin. He has had this thought before, in this same spot in his blue plastic chair while reading and lackluster listening to some unidentified recording of a cello and a piano.
The clear Sony buds didn’t fit as snugly into his ears as they should. He had mistakenly placed the L and R buds into their opposite auditory alcoves. The immediate result being a kind of misplaced volume and tone as a portion of the small speakers’ sound leaked out around curves of cartilage. He realized the minor mix-up as the weight of his forearm trapped the headphones’ shortened cord against his left thigh, causing the L bud to eject from his right ear. Each time he paid one of the electrician-in-residence guys a soup to fix up one bud, because it had gone and stopped working, he got them back with the cord a little shorter than before.
For a second, the drone of Law and Order SVU protruding from the 20-inch flat screen mounted a few feet to the left overpowered the music. Setting the book down, he quickly made the switch, and his front row seat to the chamber music concert returned. He closed his eyes, as he often did listening to his radio, to sharpen his attention on the music. Drawing air through his nostrils, he breathed into the sound of the moment. It had become almost instinctual for him to wear the headphones, not only to combat the constant noise, but to exert some control within a predetermined environment. Music was often on before he was locked up, but the therapeutic qualities, both as escape and emotional processing, would stick with him every day after his eventual release.
He pushed the grooved volume wheel on his radio downwards as he noticed an unfamiliar iPhone commercial on television. Close up images of the profile of a human ear transposed against Apple’s customary white background, while a male narrator critiqued the traditional circular earbud shape. Then a clip of a sleek redesigned white bud appeared with the voice describing Apple’s new stock headphones. “That, you know, actually fit in your ear,” as if the company had been the first ones ever to deviate from a circular design.
Despite the ad’s audacity, he was sold on its message. The past 18 months, it had often been an excruciating exercise, watching television advertisements touting the life changing possibilities of the newest advancements in technology. iPad2. Galaxy S3. Kindle Fire. iphone5. Spotify. The Cloud. Samsung Smart TV. Kia Soul. All out of reach. It might as well be fables, the stuff of science fiction.
It was an odd feeling, to miss the internet. He likened it to missing an opposable thumb for the mind. The disconnect from technology felt behind bars was to him like a ride in the Delorean, HG Wells-style, back to an alternative 1984 where there were fifteen channels of Directv and a lot more HIV. At least he didn’t have to be roused in the middle of the night by a cell phone’s notification vibrations; he had a forty something diabetic alcoholic’s snores to do that instead
RwmG
Ranch Guerra 