revelation

my first phone was about ten years ago, a thing that looked like a giant cicada. i put a faux wood case on it and carried it around for dialing up numbers. that's what it was for. my next phone, the phone i carried until about nine last night, was a waterproof, shockproof monstrosity larger than the landline phone we have. a cross between a submarine and a football helmet, this phone allowed me to figure out texting and the art of small, blurry photography. but the dog chewed off the antenna two years ago and the waterproofness only goes so far when a phone can't get signal inside a building.

the sweetie says it is time. he has been nudging me toward a new phone for a while now and finally he did what he has done the other two times a phone came my way. he got a phone he thought would be nice. now, i have made a great production of not caring about fancy new technology, about loving and being loyal to a phone that hasn't been in production for at least three years. but the sweetie knows me. he knows i will talk plenty about how i don't want bells and whistles and don't understand fancy but he knows i will figure out a new tool quickly and will be smug about it.

the phone arrives and i do not know where the on button is. it is a dark screen. this is the first time i've had a phone with no actual numbers on it. but it is easy enough to figure out. the sweetie shows me how to put music on the phone. i am resistant. the first and last time in my adult life i used headphones was 1991. i was on a bus trip from syracuse, ny to joplin, mo and my sisters let me sing the better part of a cowboy junkies album aloud before letting me in on the joke that my tone deaf croaking was both agony and entertainment for the whole bus.

but when i start putting songs into the phone i feel giddy. i have never done this. no, really. never. this is how my students live. this is how every single person in new york city over the age of ten lives. with a soundtrack. like john travolta walking down 86th street in bensonhurst, below the train, past lenny's pizza. i have had no soundtrack for my life. i put the little sound knobs in my ears and wince. i don't know how they go. this is not part of my experience. but i try again until they feel okay. i am genuinely nervous. i am worried the sound will hurt. maybe this is because of the constant, high-pitched heartbeat hissing tinnitus in my ears. maybe i think the tiny ear things can't possibly match a big wicker faced speaker. maybe it is because i don't know what i am doing. i find willie nelson's the trouble maker album, scroll down to uncloudy day and hit play. i can feel my whole head floating. i can feel willie's voice behind my eyes. i am singing along soundlessly with all those songs i've heard at baptisms, hand clapping celebration songs. the sweetie glances over, smiles and suggests i practice not mouthing the words while i'm on the bus. i tell him people will surely steer clear of me if i do mouth the words but i make a mental to work on it.

i leave the house for work in pale light. i want to try the music again but am afraid i'll fall down if i attempt to work the thing while walking. i am afraid i will drop it. once safely on the bus, i dial up old willie again and hit that uncloudy day. it just me and the bus driver and willie for a few stops. i am swaying back and forth wildly and my feet- both of them- keep time with that tent revival music. i don't sing along, though, so nobody ought to have anything to say about it.

i change buses. i scroll through the list of names on the smooth screen and come to a friend. i touch her name and her clear voice slides through the little wires and into my ears singing a sad song i wish would never end. i settle back into the seat. the woman behind me is screaming into her phone but i push a tiny button on my phone and she dissolves, the screaming woman, no match for the voice coming out of the wires, no match for my own people. i listen to two songs, three, before my stop. this is a voice that has laughed at my jokes when nobody else got them. this is someone i have drawn cartoons about. it is strange to carry her voice around with me in a pocket.

this afternoon i wait for the second bus home. i stand across the street from the corner of the cemetery and find buck owens on the screen. i'm gonna lay around the shack till the mail train comes back then i'll roll in my sweet baby's arms. the banjo hits my left ear first. the fiddles are screaming a square dance only a few seconds in. i wanted to marry buck owens when i was a little girl. i figured nobody could be sad if they could sit on a hay bale with buck owens and roy clark playing and singing. the song is so wild i lose the hissing heartbeat that has been a constant companion to my brain the last five years. i don't notice its absence at first but when i do it is a large thing to hear nothing but that song, to be free, even for those two minutes, of that miserable noise. i see the bus coming a few blocks away and cue the song up again. i step onto the bus and turn the volume up. there is nothing on the bus but me and buck and a whole crazy hillbilly orchestra.

we turn a corner and aretha franklin comes on. dr. feelgood. now, i was raised in a house where you play aretha franklin as loud as the machine you've got can go. if you can hear the doorbell over her voice you need to rethink your volume knob. so i push the volume button until i am just this side of pain, until aretha's voice has shoved back everything else and there is nothing but her and a honky tonk piano. i step off the bus just as baby, i love you comes on. i can feel the drums in my right ear and the piano in my left. they call to each other back and forth while aretha sings. i am walking down the street but it is not like every other day. the whole world has taken two or three steps back. by the time she gets to natural woman i realize the heaviness, the sharp edges that keep scraping against me when i am out in the world seem to have gotten lost. or softened. even the air slides more easily into my lungs.

i have spent twenty years afraid of headphones. i'm not kidding. genuinely afraid. and mostly i have been without music. i have spent so much time on trains and buses and in lines just waiting, anxious, unable to get away from the rest of the world. but right now willie nelson is singing in the sweet by and by, singing about a land that is fairer than day. and here i am. right here on the shore.