Xanadu

What Was I Thinking. . . .

A weird thing happened on the way to cyberspace the other day. My ISP appeared to go DOA for a few days, but instead of sending a frantic SOS via cell phone to a 911 tech wizard in Asia, or fielding my way with infinite patience and a suppressed scream through an endless cable company menu, I decided to go cold turkey. While I was at it, I also desisted from the acrid omens of the 24 hour news cycle,  chucked the iphone, the ipod  and the ipad as well and I was free as a bird with nary a tweet.

Having cleared the air of all media distractions and feeling totally disconnected, I began with early romantic poetry, dabbled in metaphysics and wound up in the intricate pentameter of a Shakespearean sonnet. Amazingly, I soon found that I was thinking for myself!  More specifically, this amazing journey began with Blake’s allusion to holding infinity in the palm of one’s hand from “Auguries of Innocence,” gained sizable momentum as a result of Hopkins’ admonition that the world could indeed “flame out, like shining from shook foil” in his ineffable “God’s Grandeur,” and ended with philosophical musings from “Julius Caesar” about the decline of empires.

Needless to say this thought provoking euphoria was not to last; the land line rang, jarring me out of an Elizabethan reverie, and much like Coleridge who purportedly never completed “Kubla Khan” because of a loud knocking on the door that rudely awakened him from an especially creative albeit opium induced fog, I picked up the phone by sheer habit and was treated to the first few horrible utterances of a robo call. 

Is it possible this interlude from the cacaphony of the 21st century may only have been a dream. . . .