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My LobotomyJuly 27, 2007 I am powerless over my Internet connection. Forty-eight hours ago it, inexplicably and without warning, vanished -- if something as intangible as a wireless connection can be said to vanish when there never was any real there there. I'd downloaded e-mail, skimmed the headlines in the several news digests I get, and composed an e-note to the production editor for a job I was interested in. I hit Send. It wouldn't go. No sweat: in humid or rainy weather, my connection gets a little cranky and sometimes sending takes a couple of tries. I tried half a dozen times. Nothing went, nothing came. The connectivity icon on my taskbar was an ominous red. I hadn't admitted my powerlessness yet, however, so I ran the repair utility (which usually restores the connection) and even checked my software settings, even though I hadn't messed with them recently. I ran the repair utility several times, even though it was having no effect. One definition of insanity is "repeating the same action and expecting different results." I looked in the virtual mirror and recognized the incipient wildness in my eyes. I am powerless over my Internet connection . . . I got back to work. My current copyediting job is on-screen, so when I need to check a name, a fact, or a phrase online, I generally do it at the end of a paragraph. No connectivity, no Web access. I started making notes to myself: CHECK DATE. ESTABLISHED PHRASE? NEED FIRST NAME . . . Turned out my neighbor couldn't raise a connection either. Whew. It wasn't just me, and it wasn't just Morgana V. I really was powerless over my Internet connection. To cut the anguish short (it's repetitive, it's boring, and you've probably been there, done that), I couldn't connect for 24 hours, and the problem turned out to be that the hardware for the wireless network needed a reset. What I'm stuck with is a forceful reminder that not only am I powerless over my Internet connection, I'm totally dependent on something I'm powerless over. I know people who log on once or twice a week. I know people who don't even have a computer, to whom inability to access the World Wide Web is about as catastrophic as inability to live in an anthill. I am not one of those people. Without access to the Internet I am like Superman exposed to gold kryptonite: my superpowers disappear. Or a telepath whose communication is abruptly limited to words and gestures and who is at the same time placed under house arrest. The whole world is out there and I can't reach it. Conversations were going on without me. I couldn't ask questions, give advice, or make wisecracks. If I'm not connected, who -- and where -- am I? I'm a tidal pool cut off from the ocean and beginning to stagnate. All my adult life I've been haunted by an image -- well, no, not "haunted" really. The image first appeared as a waking vision when I was in my twenties, and ever since it's been showing up at intervals to tap me on the shoulder. It's the Washington Monument at night, floodlit by a circle of lights. One by one the lights go out and the monument disappears. My brain knows that the monument is still there, it's just that I can't see it; my gut knows that the monument is gone. If it can't be seen, is it really there? If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, did it make a sound? Nearly all of my writing springs from conversations (which not infrequently sound more like arguments) with places, events, books, people -- both people walking around on the planet and people who've taken up residence in my head. Without connection the conversations never start. Fortunately not all my connections are virtual, and so many cantankerous people are partying, arguing, and generally carrying on in my brain that 24 hours confined to real time/space wasn't all that bad. But it's good to have my powers back.
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