Fragments of Me

"Tell me great hero, but please make it brief
Is there a hole for me to get sick in?" - from "Tombstone Blues", Bob Dylan

"How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown" - from "Like a Rolling Stone", Bob Dylan

A week ago today I fragmented. Into small pieces. Like the small pieces of a large jigsaw puzzle. You know, those huge jigsaws of supposedly idyllic English country scenes with thatched-roof cottages and multi-hued hills and cloudy blue skies.

Except no parts of this particular jigsaw actually touched. A scrambled jigsaw.

Well, at least that's how it felt by the end of the week. I was to all intents and purposes, invisible. I saw no one - literally - for eight whole days. This must be a record for me for I cannot remember prior to last week, spending more than twenty four hours entirely alone.

How could such a thing happen in a city of eight million?

Sure, bits of me remained scattered around the place. Bits of me were remembered for sure by my friends around the world. But no one actually saw me, and only two people made sure to phone to see how I was.

How could this be?

Two reasons.

1: I was ill. And 2: I live in New York.

Eight days home alone. At first it was fun. I lay around in bed, coughing my lungs up, watching day-time telly and playing with my iPad. But after a hundred consecutive episodes, even Judge Judy becomes boring. And as for my former favorite, Joy Behar, by the end of the week her cheery happiness and loud New York voice was painfully grating. And the iPad - well that toy is no longer a shiny apple.

Around Day 3 I was so bored that I looked myself up on Google and was surprised at the amount of information there was about me. Mostly from social and professional networking sites. Enough already yet! I dropped out.

I remember the drop-outs of the seventies. I didn't appreciate them back then. Why didn't they hang in there and fight, I used to wonder. But I was so much older then, as Dylan sang. I'm younger than that now.

I intend to shrink the internet fragment of me. Of course I won't drop out of the internet entirely. It has its uses. Like looking up the weather on my iPad instead of looking out the window. And finding out how to make Anzac cookies.

But back to the fragments. There's the work-me. The social-me. The wife-me. The mother. The sister. The expat-me. The Australian-me. The New York me. I could see them all on the internet and wondered, is that the only place they now reside?

Lying alone in bed for eight days gives one time to reflect.

Yep, I made up my mind on a number of my fragments.

But as for New York - the jury's still out.


I am Kathleenwng and I approve this message