Smumb luck

Shichi: Commuted

📌 New York, NY

solar term: 大暑 / たいしょ / taisho / blistering heat

sunrise: 5:44・sunset: 20:20・moon phase: waxing・next full moon: july 26・high: 27・low: 18・feels: nothing like tokyo

in season: stone fruit, cherries, sugar, breads of many grains, real sandwiches, real bagels, stacks of free napkins, other people’s toilets, other people’s beds, other people’s desks, free coffee, mystery drippings, grime, flesh, shorts, sunglasses, heat blasts followed by cold blasts, digital mazes, digital dead ends

gardening tips: there is such a thing as too much love

recommended reading: Blank Space, by W. David Marx; the faces of your fellow commuters

predictions: absolutely none

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At some point I became a character whose running line in the movie is, “You think I got a cell phone? And let them track me?”

Them is the government, the man, big tech. Now instead I’m the one who’s watching you. On the train, in the streets, at the airport.

My iphone was stolen in June and I’ve decided not to replace it for the time being. Last Thursday I bought what I’m calling my smumb phone — technically it is smart, it runs Android 14, but formally it’s incredibly dumb, a flip phone with a T9 keyboard and tiny touch screen, which when opened is the size of two iphone minis stacked on top of one another.

Trying to type at the speed I used to, sending mixed metaphors to my friends, locating buried oblique emoji reactions, dredging up screenshot receipts from years past, is no longer possible. I don’t actually check my phone less; I watch the messages coming in throughout the day, but responding is painful and awkward, so after suffering through some typos I just flip the phone closed again. Take that, Steve.

The first casualty of the phone transition happened a few days in. On Sunday morning I woke up at 8 and speed-faffed around my kitchen in anticipation of a flight in the afternoon to Newark. At 9:30 I biked in death humidity to El’s, had a speed bla-bla breakfast with her and Sa, then at 12:30 biked home again through the hot bath of Shinjuku. I showered, did all the final floo floo and flee flees, I was running late, K arrived at 2pm to pick me up for the airport, and while I was doing my very last dilly-dally he texted from the car, btw, think your flight’s canceled. I cursed United; found that they had in fact sent a notification at 7am but it had landed in a forgotten crevice of my devices; retracted the blame; and cursed myself. I looked at the trash bags tied up by the door ready to be taken out and sighed. I turned the AC back on.

A week after I got my phone stolen, I started a new job at Bloomberg. The office is in Marunouchi, so for the first time in eight years I have a work commute, and for the first time since moving to Japan I feel like I’ve joined society. On the train to and from work, I’ve been watching. I watch people watching TV, watch them scroll aimlessly down their feeds and flick sideways between home screens, nowhere to go. I watched a woman hold up the line onto the train because she was playing a candy crush knock-off. I watched a guy just miss falling over onto a seated woman because his hand and face were glued to his phone, and when he put out his other hand to reach for the handle, he missed, because he was still looking at his phone, and again almost fell onto the woman. I watched a guy picking his nose in the corner seat, a guy trip on the escalator, a terry cloth hand towel get dislodged from its owner. I watched a woman watching me. We locked eyes, and she looked equally surprised, her face seemed to say, “What are you looking at?