A Spoonful of Ghee

“A PhD in the Sociology of the Internet — what the fuck was I thinking,” Clarissa muttered as she stumbled out of her condo on Valencia and 17th.  Red hair ruffled, glasses practically falling off her face, jeans fitting loosely around her waist after weeks of forgetting to eat, Clarissa locked the door and zipped shut her backpack which was spilling out with papers.

The irony was that Clarissa in her own affairs made a concerted effort to avoid the Internet, and technology overall, really.  Email, text messages, and instant chat were the bane of her existence.  Her research demonstrated that the uses of all these options were far more nuanced than simply providing impersonal alternatives to face-to-face interaction — but she had grown up in a big family with lots of warm, personal affection, and the clicking away in this large but lonely city just wasn’t doing it for her.

After walking a few blocks, Clarissa swung open the door to the neighborhood coffee shop and took a seat in the corner, laying out all her papers.  “Water,” she said to herself, “Let me first get some water.”  She retrieved a cup from the counter and poured some water for herself, taking a long gulp that included most of the water in the cup before setting it down.  “Food,” she said to herself next.  She went up to the counter with her pen in her hand, and deliriously pointed the pen up to her face while perusing the menu, causing a few stray marks resembling a beard to appear on her chin.  “Healthy, I need to be healthy,” she thought, and she ordered a salad.  She paced up and down the aisle behind the counter until the salad was ready, then paid for it and sat back down.

Clarissa sighed, surveying all the materials that lay in front of her.  The draft of her dissertation was due in less than a week, and she still had a good 30 pages to go.  She retrieved a pencil from her bag to mark up any relevant material and crossed her legs, opening up a periodical about youth and technology.  Occasionally taking bites from her salad, she flipped through the entire periodical within five minutes.  “Useless,” she concluded, setting the periodical on the corner of the table and taking more bites from the salad.

Pleased to have enjoyed an evening replete with intellectual and physical rigor in equal parts, I turn on the heater, cozy up in flannel pajamas, and snuggle up under the sheets with a delirious smile spreading across my lips.  I recount specific events of the day and the few days before it, the thoughts shifting and melding into lower and lower levels of coherence.

I am almost asleep when a brief, mechanical shriek interrupts my reverie. Ah, the godforsaken smoke detector.  It had sounded earlier in the day, too, and somehow stopped arbitrarily.  It just had to make its come-back at this moment, didn’t it?

I turn around and lie on my stomach.  I press one ear into the pillow, and attempt stuffing the other ear with my blanket.  No use.  The chirping is salient, as disconcerting as a pale, blue vulture eye.

I finally click on my lamp and rub my eyes, squinting as they adjust to the light.  I get out of bed and swing my desk chair a few feet over.  I step on the chair and flip open the smoke detector, facing the failing battery head-on.  I ruthlessly snatch it out.

If I am going to get burned, let me do so in oblivion.  I would rather not be cautioned too late and in vain, and I would certainly rather not be kept awake with the shrill reminder of my chamber’s diminishing prowess in smoke detection.