Technological Necessity

Evening falls on Santa Fe. The light is darkening to match the coming of night, the visibility in my room dwindling as minutes pass on this Tuesday evening. My need for the light grows too great to ignore, though I’d rather avoid the harshness of the overhead light as I sit down to write. Although the room’s main light irritates my senses, I still feel the need for light to set the stage on my writing space. The artificial glare of my computer screen’s white light piercing through the dark stifles my creative flow. Too deeply immersed in dark and electronic brightness creeping through it, I feel the craving of something other than the limited space of the dim. I need to see in this room that houses me against the dangers outside my door. Every corner, every vinyl figure of a princess or Marvel superhero, every necklace that hangs on the jewelry organizer beside my desk. I need them all in view, unobscured by the shadow the night imposes.

I hear the steady hum of the computer I’m typing on, its uninterrupted buzz of sound a constant of each day I spend before this machine upon which I write. I cannot feel it against my fingers, but still it permeates the room in this August of myriad emotions. Here alone with the sound and the screen, I contemplate the hum as a heartbeat for this silver and black laptop, or maybe an endless breath that sustains its existence of functioning. It is my lifeline to the greater world and the people I cannot speak to face to face in this covid-locked world. I rely so much on it and what it allows me to achieve in writing, though behind its façade, I don’t see its inner workings or what allows it to process information for me each day. I connect to it each day while spending many of my waking hours sitting in my tattered black swivel chair in front of it. I spend more time with this computer than anyone else these days and yet I’ve never thought about what fuels its on-and-off experience as an essential writing device before now.

Maybe it’s because of the video game docuseries I watched shortly before I began writing. Maybe the alchemy of circuits and CPUs is fresh in my memory, an indirect gateway to my understanding the laptop I watched the series on. I find as I write that technology is very much on my mind. I am more aware than I have been in days that this computer is keeping me sane and fulfilled during my struggle with isolation. What would I do if it stopped its constant hum? Would I fall back into a silent despair without waking for the sole purpose of writing in Microsoft Word? I suppose the various notebooks I’ve collected over the years would draw me back in so that I might reacquaint myself with pen and paper. I’ve spent so much time writing in a digital space that I feel most comfortable writing that way. I’ve given myself over to the circuits and digital byways, nearly a citizen of its LED corridors as Tron circumnavigating the electronic neon of the Grid.

I’ve reflected on my need for the laptop screen I see every day in this moment of listening to the motorized rush the humming produces. I’ve started to appreciate and fear my need for it as my fingers dash across the keys to form words before my eyes. In this moment, it’s only me, the laptop, and the Word document I type into. Behind the smudges on the lenses of my glasses, I see more than just this display of neutral-toned graphics. I see the thing that has the potential to keep me going in this pandemic. The hum intermingles with the sporadic bursts of my fingers tapping the lettered keyboard. The words in my head, my reflections, have taken shape on the very object I’m contemplating. I’ve spoken without making a sound. Though the hour grows later, I feel a tie to this moment and the space I’m occupying within the purple walls around me. My computer has been my company. Have I fallen too far into the rabbit hole crafted of code? Am I capable of distancing myself from its cyber gaze? I’m not yet at liberty to say. Only in this moment of a Santa Fe night in late August, I strike the keys, remaining in tune to the need of my device.