Last Sunday I bought an I-Phone
It was a VERY big deal for me because I had been talking about it forever and also waffling on if the monthly fee would be too much and wondering if I was too much of a Luddite to master the thing.
Buying an I-Phone is a very good thing
The GPS direction app alone (I feel geeky cool writing “app” instead of “application” or “thing-a-ma-jig”) has already saved me two melt-downs due to being lost. And I have an I-pod again which means I can listen to Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me in my car– which I did driving back and forth to the U.S. Canadian border on Sunday. I helped out with Global Mala at the Border – which was so sweetly glorious. Eion and Melissa lead the 108 Sun Salutations, then Michal did a fantastic yoga nidra and then Steve Goldman lead us in one of my all time favorites chants, So Much Magnificence. I couldn’t practice because my back is still tweaked but I chanted 108 Gayatri mantras and meditated while everybody else did their prayerful sweating. This was also very sweetly glorious.
What does any of this have to do with your address book?
I’ve kept a digital one since 1999. And due to the wonder of modern Apple technology, that digital address book is now on my I-Phone and (here comes the whole point) the names are displayed in a big long list instead of as individual entries.
A big long list of people.
People I’ve had crushes on, people I met on long wilderness treks, people who I lived next door and watched her light come on 4 am so she could study before her kids woke up, people who I watched Thirty Something and LA Law every Thursday night, people who taught me how to write, people who held me when I cried, people I met with in a women’s group every week for six years, people I worked with at my first job in LA at Creative Artist Agency, people who were my therapists and massaged my aching body and cut my hair and listened to how much I wanted to be someone else, people who I went to fourth grade with and was best friends with until she met her husband in 6th grade who she is still married to, people who I’ve lead workshops with, people who I smoked pot and drank beer with. People I’ve been married to (okay, the latter is just one person). People I’m jealous of. People who I don’t even remember.
People I would die for.
People who are dead.
I studied that list with big eyes, flabbergasted at these fragments of my personal history. I felt such tenderness for the woman who had lived this life, who is living this life. In the past, I might have beaten myself up for losing touch with some of these souls and beaten myself for knowing some of them in the first place. I might have wished I had more names, more friends, more connections.
But not now. Now I was, and am, tenderized by love.
And then she pruned
The very practical OCD can’t-stand-clutter part of me just HAD to prune that list, first deleting the people who I couldn’t remember, then the people I had lost touch with and wouldn’t speak to again, then the people who wouldn’t remember me. Oh, and maybe a few people I never really liked but just pretended to.
But when it came to the names of those people who have, as my mom says, gone on, I could not delete those names. I love seeing their names. They are little nudges to remember. Eric. Edna. Louise. Frank. Yvonne and Jack. Dad.
I love you.
When’s the last time you cleaned out your address book?
Not as a chore but as a celebration of the ever amazing web of your connections and vastly sublime history?
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8 responses so far ↓
1 Havi Brooks (and duck) Sep 23, 2008
This is so, so beautiful.
You might be the first person to come up with a wacky-but-accessible “address book as spiritual practice” exercise … I love the idea of using it as a place to clear out and say goodbyes and be surrounded by love.
Love! Sending some to you right now. This is awesome.
2 Jennifer Sep 23, 2008
Oh shucks, thanks! I love the idea of doing this as a spiritual practice… didn’t really frame it that way but it was. But then, it all is!
3 deb Sep 23, 2008
Congratulations on the iPhone! (I’ve had mine since day one and still love, love, love it — and it keeps getting better all the time.)
Of course, it manually synchs and updates and stuff now. (Well, that….and I have this anti-clutter thing about it so all of my address books have gotten regular updates ever since I had one.) But after reading your “address book as a spiritual practice”, I wish I had every last contact I’ve ever made in there. Just to go through it like you did!
All the best!
deb
4 Marisa Sep 24, 2008
Your post reminds me a bit of something that Vicki White and you talked about during your conference call about clutter. It had really struck a chord with me. She talked about people as clutter, and said “Some people are not meant to be part of our lives forever” and I thought, OMG who am I holding onto for whatever reason that is generating negative energy? It’s a powerful thought, and liberating too. I tend to be someone that wants to have a full address book, although for me it’s more to validate the fact that I have people that want to hear from me or at least tolerate hearing from me. What a thought provoking post, Jen. You are just so cool.
5 Jennifer Sep 25, 2008
Great thought Marisa – I’ve had the same one and I think that was part of what I was doing clearing the old address book…
Deb, yes to loving the I-phone although I’m now having trouble with email and am going to have to call the helper people. Sigh.
6 Toni Sep 25, 2008
I still have my mom’s email address in my contacts even though she passed away 2 1/2 years ago. I even send mail to that address sometimes. Forwards of funny things and those lists that ask you where you’ve lived and stuff.
7 Photopoppy Sep 26, 2008
Erm. Yes, I have recently cleaned out my address book. My hard drive crashed at the start of the summer, and I lost all of the data on it. I’m still re-generating my address book one person at a time, and this time it gets backed up regularly.
*laughs at herself*
8 Jennifer Sep 27, 2008
Oh Poppy I have so done that! And Toni, a friend told me yesterday she still calls her mother in law’s number and when she told her husband, he admitted he does the same thing.
Losing Paul Newman today made me so sad – made me miss my daddy and those years so much.
Ah, life.