ART OF LIVING l 2
Ha! Four hours! Clearly Thoreau did not own a BlackBerry.
Yesterday—and this is embarrassing—I checked my e-mail
before leaving for work and after I got to work, and I checked it
every now and then during the day at work, and, after bicycling
home from work, a total distance of two miles, I checked my e-mail again. Just in case a few e-mails ?ew over my head through
the rain while I pedaled home.
It’s disconcerting, it’s shameful. I tell myself: e-mail is work-related. E-mail is work-related and anything work-related is
family-related, right? Because work makes money and money
feeds the family. Money justi>es all. Doesn’t it?
What my evil twin Z knows, and what I am loath to articulate, to even contemplate, is that checking e-mail or tinkering
around on Facebook or reading snippets about Politician A on
Blog B is not about making money at all but about asking the
world a very urgent question.
That question is this: Am I still here?
Each time Z makes me guide the little mouse cursor to the
Send & Receive button, he’s hollering into the impossibly complex snarl of underground and aboveground >ber linking every
computer to every other: Am I part of this? Am I still here?
Yes, you’re here, Z, says Eddie Sloan re: Enlarge Your Penis
3+ Inches (100% GUARANTEED). You’re a part of it.
Yes, you’re here, Z, says Mark J. Silverman from legal, you’re
here. Now forward me that memo.
Yes, you’re here, Z, says Matt Torrington from requisitions.
You’re here all right, right here in last place in our football pool.
Since purchasing a little glassy machine called an iPhone,
