The World Spins Madly On

When I was five or six — I can't say for certain how old — I watched a film (or perhaps an episode of the Twilight Zone) about a girl who would sleep for months at a time, waking on occasion and rising from bed as though only the night had passed.

And in this manner her whole life was a dream: entire days lost to sleep, with so few life experiences to mark her existence.

For years this film would haunt me, my earliest childhood fears circulating around cancer, nuclear war and — yes — sleeping my life away.

Whether rational or otherwise, the fact remains that these fears were very real to me — reason enough to remain awake at night, in fact, terrified that by the time I awoke, the world would have continued on to a brilliant pace without me.

And today, some years later, I tell you: that story was no work of fiction. And yet: as much as I strove to avoid such a fate, it appears to have fallen firmly and irresolutely upon my chest, the weight of it some mornings making it nearly impossible to breathe.

I feel it now — typing to the blanket "you" of this fiber optic universe — marveling only at how the magnetic force of this... nothing and everything... has gathered now into the pit of my stomach (the gravitational consequence of attempting to sit up, I think), leaving all other nooks, crannies and extremities to their own, hollow devices.

I am awake now and yet: still asleep. Love and lifetime lost to a nightmare that knows no rest.

Personal Tragedy for the Moderately Privilegedand Terminally Neurotic

When I returned home from the gym last night, I wasn't in the best of moods. I spent the three-block walk to my apartment waxing contemplative and — as a result of my contemplations — I felt more than a little down.

Which is perhaps why I found it to be rather fortuitous when I saw a random CD in that strip of grass that separates the cracked city sidewalk from the street. Not that the mere sighting was a sign from God himself, but that upon further inspection I saw that it was the soundtrack to Reality Bites. The CD was broken in two, but the title itself was perfectly in tact, taunting my camera-less self from the cold, brown/green, leaf-covered grass.

It was even somewhat propped up, though a little off-balance, by the exposed roots of some random tree, as if begging me to capture it in all of its ironic glory.

(For those of you who make fun of my tendency to carry a camera everywhere I go, this is precisely the sort of picture I'm terrified of missing.)

So I made a note to myself to pack my camera Wednesday morning, which I did rather promptly after getting out of bed.

***But I was in a hurry (as I am most mornings), so I quickly unwrapped my camera from its case while I made the bitter walk to my urban chariot (winter is here at last!).

I got out my three-year-old Sony. Turned it on. And then smiled a crooked little smile when I saw the broken CD supine in its original resting place.

(This all the while a fellow tenant — to whom I've never spoken more than "hey" and "hello" — walked past, turning her head and raising her brow as she tried to figure what on earth I was up to).

But I wasn't so much worried about securing my status as "that strange girl in apartment B" as I was with the task at hand. So I hit the shutter, only to be greeted by a punch in the stomach.

And by that I mean... a heart-wrenching message flashed on the LCD:

NO MEMORY STICK

I confirmed a memory stick was in place, took it out, and put it back in. I tried again.

NO MEMORY STICK

I took the memory stick out again, confirmed it was "unlocked," and then flipped the switch from SIDE A to SIDE B.

NO MEMORY STICK

I tried again. And again. But always to that same, miserable end.

I boarded up my camera, threw it into the car, and drove onward.

***Later it occurred to me to try a different memory stick, since my 256 MB card isn't made by the camera's manufacturer, though the 32 MB backup is.

So I sucked in my breath, uttered a couple hail Mary's, and tried again.

NO MEMORY STICK

OK, I thought. Stay calm. When a laptop acts up, one of the first pieces of advice is to remove all peripheral devices, including all sources of power.

So I took out the battery, and the memory stick. I waited 30 minutes, and put everything back in.

NO MEMORY STICK

I did this again, the next time waiting two hours before re-inserting the battery.

NO MEMORY STICK

It was about then that I acknowledged the cold, hard fact that my camera was likely broken. And these digital dohickeys are as difficult to repair as they are expensive to replace.

Or, to sum it up,

[drumroll please]

REALITY BITES