Originally posted 03.24.2006
About two months ago, in anticipation of being able to run longer than 20 minutes again some day, I bought an MP3 player. Not an iPod, which has become the label for all of these things irrespective of brand (like Kleenex or Walkman), but a more PC-compatible (so I was told) version. It’s lipstick red and about the size of a cigarette lighter and about as satisfying to hold—the single triple-A battery gives it a little heft.
My first day with the thing tipped me into addictland in about half an hour. Press shuffle and personally selected tunes from a variety of genres pour into my ears and dance across my brain’s pleasure center. Like finding all my favorite songs on a jukebox in a dive bar with a good tap selection, affable bartender, and an amusing old man clientele. (But without the beer, bartender, or old coots. Oh well.)
The giddiness faded, however, as it will with any type of high. Shuffle wasn’t so random. There’s no way the same song came up by chance four times in an hour (like the way I keep getting called for jury duty). And some never get played (when I programmed in “Farewell Angelina,” I had no idea I’d never hear it again). And then it broke, sort of—shutting off anytime I tried to manipulate the volume—so I had to fix it, and in doing so lost all the tunes originally programmed because I couldn’t figure out how to save the G drive material to my, um, wherever those things should go.
But there’s still some love for the thing. It’s good company, and encourages buoyancy in my step. And I do get some satisfaction in identifying fellow MP3 travelers, identifiable by the white cords and ear buds.
Somewhat troubling, though, is the one step further removed from fear of death that this device brings me. I’ve never really feared the end, although in happier times it makes me sad to reflect on that inevitability. But fear is an anticipatory feeling, one that you can’t have if you don’t see it coming.
Like I didn’t see the taxi I stepped in front of during my lunchtime ramble a couple of days ago. I guess I wouldn’t be writing this if the driver hadn’t seen me and hit the brakes. It wasn’t a particularly strange intersection, so I was kind of mystified as to how this cab came to be there all of a sudden, driver shaking his fist and giving me a sound ‘what for’ (I couldn’t really hear more than repeated use of the word “idiot”). But I had been deeply enjoying Caravan, and, with my coat hood up, was pretty shut off from anything outside of my own tiny little sphere of sensation.
Once I got over the embarrassment (how can a runner who’s mindful of bicyclists morph into an otherwise oblivious pedestrian), I was…how to put this without sounding morbid? Relieved and a little pleased by the thought that I could be released with so little concern. Dispatched without anxiety. And the humor angle: getting splattered by a New York taxi on the day of my sixth anniversary in the big city—the irony is delicious.
Carrying that MP3 player is obviously a hazard. The device has eroded my commuter reading time (those New Yorkers are really piling up) and softened the burden of thoughtfulness (I’m getting stupider). It has made me more vulnerable as I walk around by hobbling my awareness. But considering the cycle of thought that has gripped my brain going on, oh, three months or so, I’m not sure this is all bad. So for now I think I’ll just continue this dumbed down game of chicken, and if it kills me, let it do so while I’m singing along.
