TO-WIT: HEARTS OF DARKNESS
It was well past the end of the working day; my secretary, visibly shell shocked, had quit the field hours ago for safer ground and I’m sitting here alone, surrounded by the detritus of battle. Pieces of machinery now lay strewn in broken repose across my office floor, marking the landscape as grimly as tombstones.
Despite the fading light I can yet make out parts of what had formerly been my all in one printer; it is no longer all in one. My computer lies gratifyingly shattered into a gazillion pieces, its memory irretrievably scarred, and my iPhone has sustained the exact result one hopes for with a direct hammer blow. Just before she passed on into e-ternity, Siri said “I’m sorry, I do not have the body parts to do that.”
It’s quiet now, finally, blessedly quiet. There isn’t a beep, gong, bell, whistle, boop, tweet or chirp anywhere. I’m especially grateful that when my secretary beat her hasty retreat her cell phone’s “I Heard It On The Grapevine” ringtone went with her; I used to love that song.
I did this, all of it. Maniacally, methodically, maliciously, I did this, and like most slaughters, it had been a long time fomenting. For far too long now my work day has consisted of a tsunami of unwelcome intrusions; emails, faxes, text messages, cell phone calls, a continuous blitz of interruptions so diversionary that the important tasks at hand only get done in fits and starts. When you stir into that frustrating mélange an assortment of technology glitzes, wireless connections that don’t connect, fax machines that won’t, servers that don’t serve, passwords that don’t work and telephones with more buttons than a Victorian bustle, my entire day gets spent infuriatedly trying to service all the things that are supposed to be servicing me. Its madness.
This isn’t the first time I’ve destroyed a recalcitrant machine. Baseball bat in hand, I have had a few successful skirmishes with a couple of machines in the past. This is the first time however that I’ve taken out an entire platoon.
I knew I needed help. I mean, psychotic rage certainly has its place in the practice of law but this was a little much even for me. Since my rage therapist was out of town, I placed a call to Dr. Phorme, my anxiety therapist.
“What’s wrong with me,” I asked.
“You mean aside from your being a lawyer,” he quipped; he’s always thought he had a sense of humor.
He told me I have a love-hate relationship with machines; on one hand they remind me of my parents, on the other hand I really love them.
“That’s a pretty dark thing you got going on there,” he offered, “perhaps you should do deep breathing exercises and then count to ten.”
“Oh, you mean like how you taught me to do when I talk to defense counsel,” I said, “Yeah, I can do that.”
I worked from home the next several days as my secretary arranged for new equipment to be installed. When I returned it started all over again with the beeps and boops and breakdowns. Between deep breaths I realized that if we think we own these machines we are only kidding ourselves. It is they who own us, and it is a bondage from which there is now no longer any hope of escape.
In Conrad’s “The Heart of Darkness,” when Kurtz finally saw the truth, he chillingly said “Oh, the horror, the horror.” I’m thinking he must have had a fax machine.
© 2016, S. Sponte, Esq.