The smart watch
I was given a smart watch for Christmas 4 years ago. I wore it religiously for the first 3 months and soon tired of the endless charging it required and the baby pink watch band that accumulated grime at an alarming rate. One day I let the battery go out and still wore it for about a week after that – a dead watch. I would check it occasionally just to see my annoyed eyeball staring back out at me from the dark, reflective face.
It then sat in a box, next to its charger for several years. And I found it as I was panning for gold in my possessions before leaving Montana. I’m wearing it again, currently at 56% charge.
I read an article some time ago, by which I mean I watched a video about it by a man with creative facial hair, about the fact you shouldn’t use a laser pointer to play with your cat. The lack of a tangible prey analog at the end of the chase eventually gets into your cat’s head and they develop a lack of confidence unfitting for that type of creature. I absorbed the suggestion and immediately tossed my laser pointer, and picked back up the mouse on a string toy. Anything for my baby.
My baby, however, fucking loves to chase laser lights. And in their absence she has developed an affinity for shadows. She waits at corners during certain times of the day when the sun is right and the curtain flitters a bit in the wind – and then she just throws herself at the wall over and over trying to pin down the moving shadow. I cant erase all such stimulus from the house so I am afraid she will simply develop a complex. Her favorite lure though, as it turns out, is the little circle of light reflected from the face of this damn watch.
Every morning as I sit in my chair and raise the coffee cup to my lips, I send a little reflection running across the room – my cat in hot pursuit. Her ego seems as yet unaffected, but time will tell.
The watch does not only do the traditional magic of telling the time but is also equipped with a pedometer and heart rate monitor. It is rather alarming to have such a finger on the pulse of my anxiety throughout the day. At the end of the night I pull up my app and get to see the full landscape of cardiovascular activity.
Every working night around 430 PM I am cleaning old candle wax out of candle holders. We use a butterknife and it is always done in a rush. 5 minutes in the cardio zone! At 10:23 AM I decide to go back to sleep – so that’s 3 minutes of cardio with my lover analog and then 1 hour of sleep, bumping my sleep score for the day to a whopping 71. Around 9PM I chance upon my coworker in the starewell where we go to hide from customers, the proximity puts me into the cardo zone for a full 7 minutes. At the end of the day I have paced 6 miles up and down this narrow stretch of bar.
It occurrs to me on mile 4 that the backbar is a kind of sticky beach. Maybe just today, after a different comrade broke 3 glasses and hastily swept the broken pieces. Still, I could sense tiny shards remaining underfoot, experiencing the mechanical weathering of my walking. I wonder how long it will take before they simply return to sand. Someone is trying to ask me about absinthe and I am thinking that the floor back here makes me want to lift my feet like a dog wearing socks.
I’m sorry sir, you wanted a Sazerac?
I tell you these things for no apparent reason – except to remind myself that I took my watch off in these pictures, and therefore have no idea the effect it had on my heartrate. But my cat, at least, was grateful for some rope to chase instead of weightless light.
boshai 