Unplugged

Today’s prompt from ThinkIt:

Unplug for an hour, a half day, or a whole day. Choose a time that feels a little uncomfortable. How did you feel? What did you do? Reflect on your experience. How much did you unplug this year? How does this experience make you feel about unplugging in the coming year?

I did spend an hour unplugged today at church, which is nothing new, and not really any kind of sacrifice, but it does put me in touch with my thoughts. I do tend to feel the absence these days, when not connected to those unseen but so-compelling forces that draw us to whatever place this is. We used to live our lives in a moment. Now we kind of live it in a binary state.

The Monsignor does his usual thing. I am glad all that singing of the Our Father is over. Never could get into that. Not to mention that the Monsignor sings like an alley cat in heat. Plus it’s nice to see the purple and pink of the Advent season. I love the holidays.

Two rows up I see the lady who brings her two young sons, one of whom always insists on being held while she’s standing. The kid has to be at least six or seven years old. How does she hold him up like that? She must work out. I wonder what she benches. I should try to bench something. Who am I kidding? I lift the lightest things I can find when I go to the gym. And that phrase right there is laughable. When. I need to start doing that…

So here I am, sitting in a Catholic church feeling guilt. Shocker.

Three rows up, there are those two ladies…are they sisters? Are they twins? They have the same sort of fashion sense, and totally the same hair style, like the one Lucille Bluth has in Arrested Development. I wonder what they talk about.

The Monsignor steps up to the plate for the Gospel. I swear, I don’t know anyone else in the world who consistently makes the word “you” a two-syllable one. After the Gospel, he reads his homily, which is all about…I really need to be sure to clip Clooney’s fingernails today. And the Princess really needs to wear leggings under her dresses if she’s going to sit like that. I wonder who cleans this place, and how often. The lady behind me just coughed into what sounded like her hand. I’m going to have to shake that hand in a few minutes, and then, would it be rude to use hand sanitizer before I go to get Communion?

The lady at the end of our pew is the lady with the terrible RA in her hands. I wonder how much pain she is in. How does she deal with that?When I shake her hand to wish her peace, her hands, despite being covered by wrinkled papery skin, are as soft as kid gloves.

I wonder what people think when they shake my hand. Can they tell how many times a day I wash my hands? Do I have the tell-tale sandpapery fingertips of someone who uses her hands all day in the kitchen?

I have not unplugged much this year. In fact, if anything, electronics have coiled their sparking tentacles even more tightly around my brain. I used to think that I didn’t need all of this, and I wonder at what point the changover in thinking occurred. Knowing that makes me think I should try to step away a bit more in 2013, but is that just another layer of guilt to lay on?