Biggest Tease

Three days ago, the headphones to my beautiful, black, 60gb, video iPod died. Too lazy to replace them as of yet, I have been deprived of their shelter since....and life has been oddly real. I understood how the presence of music on long walks up to campus, bus rides, work days, study outings and gym sessions could uplift your mood, increase your diligence and focus your game. However, I had not realized that this iPod was my crack.

As a hermit by nature, crowds annoy. I could spend a year in solitary with nothing but white walls and find entertainment...but the last three days, without the iPod, have reawaken senses I had forgotten were valid. I feel the cool keys as I type, I hear the weights clink back into place as I lower to a halt at the end of a squats set, I hear the murmur of people speaking around me, I feel my chest restricted as the smoke from the patio outside drifts in to find me, I hear a song playing over the cafe speakers; one of my favorite songs from high school that I haven't heard since...and it brings a sadness to me. I realize that enhancing my mood and heightening my heartrate by way of selfishly selected playlists brings with it a dichotomy that actually affects how I react to my environment. For one, there are songs that make me smile to myself when I wanted to cry but two minutes before. Yet it takes from me the reality in which I am actually knee deep...........this reality is not particularly enjoyable: it seems to drag on, moment by moment similar to the difference between driving a car down the street or walking there instead; only you don't get there any faster.

I wonder, if we are all such lonely creatures, constantly seeking out and needing contact with others - by touch, by warmth, by communal areas, by listening, by watching, by being watched, by asking, by hearing, by drunken hook-ups, by servicing institutions, by reading, by buying, by hoping, by smiling, laughing, needing, wanting, crying, shopping, squeezing, forgetting, crashing, leaving, clinging, being left, waiting, fighting - why do we cling to our iPods? To console the soul when the contact never comes? To remind ourselves that you can only take care of number one and hope for organic connections to plow into you hard enough to throw your earphones off? But, then....well, are we not enclosing ourselves in musical capsules at the bursting of which we react with fury against people we don't know but may have had a chance at connecting with?

Where did the "we" go?