Farewell from NYC 9.9.13

re·prieve 

[ri-preev] noun
2.   To relieve temporarily from any evil. 

1501 Broadway, home of my former employer, Hardesty & Hanover

     I've had this flip phone for many years. It always worked fine and the battery life remained strong through the years. This was my phone well into the years of smartphone ubiquity and the shock and dismay people expressed when seeing my phone for the first time long ago became tiresome and depressing. Girls at the bar would ask why I didn't upgrade and I told them with this phone I could call them, text them and, most importantly, send dick pics. I never wanted internet or email in my pocket; in fact, at the times, here and there, when I lost my phone or forgot to take it somewhere, I always enjoyed not having it. Through the years, I've joked, on the rare days when I got too many calls or text messages, that I would end up throwing my phone in the river.

     Once, during my year of teaching high school Physics, I proposed to a group of four or five boys in my senior, non-AP class that they do a round of rock, paper, scissors and the loser would have to throw his phone in the Quahog River. Just after a young man named Andrew lost, he said he wasn't gonna throw his phone in the river. As a generally trusting person, I had overestimated these high school kids and was shocked at his flagrant dishonor to the game. I told him if he chose not to follow through with the agreed upon consequences, he would have to suffer something woree. Moments later, his classmate Ryan hit him in the nuts. The connection was solid and Andrew doubled over in pain. Judging this as an adequate substitute for a waterlogged and lost phone, I was inwardly pleased and allowed the act to pass unpunished. Class continued.

     Four nights ago, there was a gathering held in honor of my departure. During a conversation with my father and his once coworker and longtime family friend Faye, she inquired about The Yoga Forest, my first extended stay destination in Guatemala. As I began to tell her about the place, my father sugeested we look at their website on his phone. I suggested we skip that hoping we could carry on the conversation without a technological interjection. Getting away from iPhone nation full of iPhone zombies is high on my list of reasons for leaving.

     A couple months ago, my trusted LG flipphone developed a small crack on the outside of the bearing where the screen pivots away from the keypad. Through contunued use, the crack propagated and eventually a small piece of plastic fell of the phone. The phone now, while held by the screen, could dangle, only attached at the other half of the bearing. It worked for a while, but eventually, the two essential halves of the phone became completely separated and though calls could be placed, I couldn't hear anything and the detached screen showed black. For the time it still worked, the phone was held together by what my mother described as "a small piece of tobacco."

     I coupled someone's old Verizon cellphone with my account so I could have a phone until my departure. Leaving from New York City seemed the perfect opportunity to finally throw that old phone in a river. My plan was to go the crest of the Manhattan Bridge, say a few (recorded) words and casually toss the phone into the mouth of the East River below. I write these words on the eve of my departure from the Park Slope apartment of my longtime friend and ex-roommate Aaron Morse and his new roommate, my longtime friend and Hebrew School classmate, Lee Weiss. The top of the Manhattan Bridge is nearly three miles from here, and with no bicycle to use, I won't end up going. I'm not walking and I'm not taking a Subway closer to the bridge to hike up and add litter to water beneath. Instead, I'll head to Prospect Park and continue reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography as the man himself nears his final days.

     I don't need a symbolic ceremony for this. Canceling the plan and giving up the personal phone number I've had for 11 years is the meaningful part. The time I get back will be for me, this trip is for me and even these words are for me. I appreciate immensely the support I've received from loved ones, both emotional and financial, and I wish everyone the courage needed to move forward with your own dreams and journies, whatever they may be. Anywhere on Earth people are surviving, you can survive, too.

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