On Foldable Habits (& Happenstance)
As a young girl, I’d been taught that habits are just as hard to break as they are to make. Conditioning carefully constructed; habits carefully formed, I worked hard to comply with well-intentioned advice. I gathered and garnered guidance (generously shared). I also assumed admonitions to remain abreast of news were often (if not always) admirable. I subscribed to (and later streamed) updates of all kinds. Headline honchos. Ballpark hits. Local coverage. Acronym soup. ABC & NBC. CNN & ESPN. Prime time in real time. I’d follow updates to remain informed of the day’s most important events. Weather patterns. Traffic tie-ups. Uptown happenings. Downtown happenstance.
As I grew and birthed offspring of my own, I continued to consume well-meaning metrics of care and consumption. Make space for rest. Avoid overdrive. Tame the hive. Dream, don’t stream. The news, it’s contrived. Despite the better judgment of my brood, I was only able to temporarily comply.
I’d been trained to consume news. Habits as hard to break as they are to make. I’d catch up on missed streams while I walked, clothed in star-speckled cotton and rainbow-hued striped socks, as I often did (and do) most days after dark. Under the night sky. I’d scan the galaxies above, my own Galaxy (Samsung) in tow. All fingers nimble. All eyes in focus. Collars carefully folded. I’d trace then order a curious collection of celestial sights. Another habit initiated in my youth, I’d recreate, then iterate (evidence of procreation nowhere in sight). From A to Z — Andromeda. Bear’s Paw. Carina dwarf. Draco dwarf. Hercules A. Zwicky’s Triplet. All while tracking less cosmic combinations and permutations on my Samsung device. Anchor news. Business bets. Rural resets. Intimations. Political Revelations. Heirs and airs on full display. Globes (both print and planetary) spinning.
Old habits persist. Change always something I (we) tend to (universally) resist. Yahoo News consistently confirms my suspicions and my predilections. We’re irregular creatures with regular habits. On a steamy Wednesday (the skies bright with heat). Thunder a distant threat, I was struck by a new live update. Strings of syllables promised far flung fanfare. In rapid-fire succession. Had I blinked, I might have missed the latest star — a phone that bends to all needs. The Samsung Foldable — a formidable development. Feature reach. Spec(tacular), by any stretch of the Milky Way. All bars intact. All backs (metal and mortal) heavy. Rainbows as rare as reunification. Star Wars more timely than ground wars.
I’d been taught that many metals are able to bend without breaking. Force must exceed a material’s stretch for metal to fold. Tasks dependent on hand, heat, or press. I continued to walk, in rubber soles with no brakes. And moonlit skies with no breaks. I counted stars as the stats continued to stream. Mayhem in the night sky. Multi-tasking madness on full display. I thought of live updates of weeks’ past. The war in Ukrainian rages on. An additional thirty-two gunshots fired in Philadelphia earlier that day alone. Temps still climbing. Those feeds now hidden at the bottom of search ladder hits and bits. New stars on the horizon. More signs of change. Not phones but phonetics. All hidden in folds of flesh and fresh pressure to maintain buzz and nests. The foldable phone surely a double (doozy). Grand slams not as common as in days’ past.
Eager for more notable forms of news (old habits persist), I scrolled and noted the Galaxy’s heavy coverage. Not unlike the weather. Of all the galaxies in the universe only a few hit prime-time consumption. Samsung a feature in (and of) the skies. Live updates more a means to promote than inform. To perpetuate and indoctrinate. The event was coined Galaxy Unpacked. The product hyped. A newly coined star. Multi-tasking part of the multi-universe. Marvels and madness persist. Unable to unpack that, my thoughts went to packing. Meteor showers on unpredictable schedules. Galaxy Unpacked carefully choreographed. I counted suitcases and conference seats. Tickets and timestamps. One. Two. Four thousand and thirty-three. And props from A to Z. Air space. Bytes. Chrome. And became consumed by a desire to unpack the titles of all the planets in the Milky Way.
Ultimately, I clicked unsubscribe. Placed my bets on the galaxies above. Tightened my belt. Tucked all wishes not on stats but stars. Traced dots and tracked patterns of Orion and moon shots. Everything I need to know hidden (in plain sight) in the skies. If only old habits didn’t persist so hard.
—Submitted on 09/24/2022
Jen Schneider is the 2022 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Her poem have appeared in Spillwords Press, The Write Launch, Fevers of the Mind, and many other journals.
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Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left revers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left.
