obituary for Chocolate (le téléphone est mort)

i adopted my telephone in March 2007. it was born somewhere in Asia, the child of globalization and post-industrial capitalism, and traveled around the world only to be abandoned inside a big box retailer in South Florida. it had a clever name, cost nothing, and i fantasized that the woman who sold it to me might give me her phone number in her demonstration of its utility.

[lapse 15 months]

i dropped my telephone in a glass of water. it was immersed only momentarily, and i feared for its life, imagining all the digital horrors and mechanical nightmares that would soon follow. i made frantic visits to various vendors and shamans, terrified by the thought of being incommunicado. they told me to let it dry, and i spent a restless night dreaming about tin cans and fishing line. i saw a giant serpent wrapping itself around the neck of our planet, keeping us all connected. the phone survived.

[lapse 18 months]

i turned on my telephone on Sunday evening. it booted up only partially and then proceeded to loop from title screen to black, from title screen to black. the next day i made an apathetic visit to a single vendor who told me my phone was dead. i left the store, half-mournful until i considered how many looks are wasted each day checking the time, checking the messages, checking the battery life. i dreamed that night of a world with less things keeping us connected - it continued spinning all the same.

[lapse 12 hours]

i woke this morning, phoneless and smiling.