This is an ex­er­cise in draw­ing you back to your body be­fore you slip into your screen. We start by step­ping be­yond both. You are an at­ten­tive ob­server, ob­serv­ing your pat­terns of at­ten­tion. Note sym­me­tries usu­ally hid­den: par­al­lelism, in the an­gle shared by crook of neck and cant of screen; per­pen­dic­u­lar­ity, in the T cre­ated by line of sight on plane of screen. Simplicity be­lies com­plex­ity: you, con­vex; screen, sheer, rec­ti­lin­ear with hard lines but round edges; study the shapes, tod­dlers do. Windows within win­dows within win­dows, open­ing right, clos­ing left. Within these fixed con­tours is so much of your ex­pe­ri­ence, col­lapsed, cap­tured, con­tained.

But vi­sion is in­suf­fi­cient, de­ceit­ful even, ex­actly that which locks us in it. Turn to touch to bust your way out. A screen prof­fers in­fin­ity, all phe­nom­ena dis­played, re­layed through uni­fied tac­til­ity. The tem­per­a­ture: icy, ever cooler than your skin. The tex­ture: in­ert, glasslike metal and metal­lic glass, fric­tion­less yet re­lent­lessly re­sis­tant. Summon the sen­sa­tion of por­tals with pur­chase with­held. The pads of your fin­gers press­ing, swip­ing, down, again, up, again. What you feel is your own flesh yield­ing. Now power down. Backlight black, bask in your traces: glo­ri­ous smears, gal­lant smudges. Meld in the dark with your ev­i­dence, just you re­leased and re­flected.

Our bod­ies con­tinue to chron­i­cle their own crav­ings. Pain, both real and imag­ined. Phantom spasms flicker through fe­murs. Rogue rings tickle in­ner ears: tu­mults of tin­ni­tus brought by the tran­sient trill. Better bury the burn be­hind your eye­balls, then. Some stings are self-ev­i­dent, the price paid for a sev­enth sense: a cer­tain sen­tience, iPro­pri­o­cep­tion. If lo­ca­tion is rel­a­tive, so must si­lence and soli­tude be. Do you also wake up with screens be­neath your pil­lows? Is it your limbs that ar­tic­u­late your first needs, in­au­gu­rat­ing morn­ing with un­des­ig­nated au­ro­ral mi­gra­tions? They ful­fill your will un­til stiff­ness set­tles in. No tooth fairy ever sooth­said with such pre­ci­sion. If al­go­rithms owe penance it’s for rup­tur­ing cir­ca­dian rhythms, for chis­el­ing deeper into the crevasse of every in­ner schism. Nature verse nur­ture, sub­li­mated into sub­tle tor­ture.

And the mat­ter of the heart. Where it most hurts. Screens, the pri­mary source of ressen­ti­ment. Don’t mis­place fury: you were felled, fi­nally, by our com­mon frailty. So long as synapses fire de­sign will work as well as dopamine; it is de­sire that dis­ap­points. The spirit wres­tles for con­trol: it loses: self­hood cur­dles. Now comes im­pas­sioned dis­sec­tion: find the bits of sor­row to keep safe while you sift for de­spair. Hope must not fold un­der the bur­den of proof. In truth it is the beauty of ba­nal­ity that I promise you.

One day, the fi­nal screen will have slipped back un­der the sea. Its slick so­lid­ity will have weighed down one last sup­ple palm, its heavy heft will have lain along one last line of long fin­gers. We will have known the cost, ac­cepted li­a­bil­ity for the re­main­ing bal­ance. The legacy of use will be in­dis­tin­guish­able from the lin­eage of abuse, the residue of an­guish. There will be a splash not un­like the old com­mer­cials for liq­uid crys­tals. The first tasks will have been to flex the mus­cles of your mind in or­der to move mean­ing to your body.

Language is fu­tile if we let it float by dis­em­bod­ied. This printed page is do­ing bat­tle; these sen­tences and sibi­lants are sep­a­rately giv­ing chase. When the chords of our cores thrum to­gether in vivid vi­bra­tion, when we mark the mu­tual em­a­na­tion, then—then and only then—will we have sounded out sol­i­dar­ity.