"We haven't had a good conversation ever since the land line," my mother says to me. The doorbell rang as I'm on the phone with her. The kid next door wants to borrow the snow shovel, walk out, show him, nudge him about putting it back. I go back to my indoor bike set-up, as I've been tapped to meet a buddy out sooner rather than later to catch some live music, and the conversation continues somehow distant, disjointed, rushed. Which is a very different feeling than when I'm in her company.

The shiny screen, yes, we see it more and more, and less and less the person, the poetry, the depth. We see only the glimpse ourselves in the shiny glowing mirror of technology. "Wow, that's cool," we say, "don't I look good. Everyone can see me." Like the crow we're drawn to the novelty, the speed, the gadgetry, on to the next thing.

Armed with our devices, we wander largely alone in the city as if it were a wasteland but for exactly what we wanted, braced to process the next blip on the screen, connecting on a real human level with few but the service people we encounter, the stranger at the grocery store check out. (But I must admit, I enjoyed listening to "If I Should Fall From Grace With God," riding out on the metro at the tail end of rush hour, the modern worker just kind of zonked out, schlepping home.) We treat the latter like a blind gift, glad they're kind to us, part of the deal, and they are woefully underpaid for the life's blood of humanity they provide. (Have they become our church? We attach our addled selves to them, like Lear holding on to the clown.)

Here I encounter my own vanity. I'm finally getting it, "the medium is the message." We don't realize we've lost all content down to the thinness of the screen. (We should have thought about that before completely wiring the classroom.) And any self-promoter, who does well in this environment, you have to look at them for the perfect creature of vanity and instant shallow soundbite they are, caring, in many cases, for little more than their own image. (Unlike some who are popular these days, great at getting their faces out there, Lincoln, who had a sense of the job he had to do, made speeches with substance with good structure and sense to them. Bravo to the current President for trying to do the same in the face of all the shiny mirror wavers, even if his gang sends me too many emails.)

Achh, the nerve under my eye is on the verge of starting to twitch again at the sight of the information super highway. I'm going to quit and go see if I can still read a passage of Moby Dick, or maybe a Thomas Hardy poem, 'No grain, no grain...' or take a walk in a stand of woods if it will still have me, or maybe just grocery shopping, something I need to do before the week starts, before the week starts. Or maybe call Mom, from my land line. Thanks for reading. Now go do something semi-real, if you can.

Or raise a shout against the perfect monolith of the screen and all its enchanted cold minions, "at least I am real," before being cut down for being human and imperfect.