Message Minus

I want my messages. I don’t want my messages.  

When we come to Italy I take the Verizon SIM card out of my iPhone and insert a TIM SIM card. With TIM, a popular cell service provider here, I get unlimited calls, unlimited data, and unlimited messages for about $17 a month. And the price seems to be dropping. (A year ago I paid $21 a month for all that unlimited service. Someone should tell Verizon.) In addition to being cheap, the Italian number keeps me in touch with friends and family over here. They know me as 3312219489. They’ve got my number. But the thing is, with the SIM card swap, I no longer receive all text messages to my US Verizon number: iPhone messages yes, mostly; non-iPhone no, none. There are times I need that connection. Yesterday I needed to receive, via text message to my Verizon number, an American bank code to validate a hotel reservation. I want my messages.

I thought I solved the problem before we left the US a few weeks ago. Verizon invites users to download an app called Message+.  You download and activate the app, enter your Verizon number, and messages come to the Message+ app.

I read up on the app before I tried it. Buggy, one reviewer said. Another described it as finicky. A third user, in a review entitled “Necesary Evil,” wrote, “Like most people, I don’t tend to write reviews for things I like. I also don’t tend to write reviews about things I don’t care for, but this application deserves a review.”

I thought: this will be a Hail, Mary. Let’s see if this thing works.

We’ve been here two weeks today. In that time, on Message+ I’ve received three messages. I’m beginning to think it should be called Message-. 

But it may turn out to be a gift. Maybe I don’t want or need my messages. Maybe this is a vacation from messages. 

We live in an age of hyper connectivity, ushered in decades ago by America Online. I remember the initial thrill of firing up the phone line connection between my computer and AOL, hearing the long scratchy, staticky handshake, then the greeting, “You’ve got mail!” Every login was Christmas. For me? I’ve got mail?  

That was then. Today our inboxes are bursting. Some mornings Tizi comes downstairs and finds me poking at my phone or tapping keys on my computer keyboard.

“What are you doing?” she asks me. 

“Deleting email.” 

“I’m setting aside time later today to delete email, too,” she says.

It’s a daily chore. Like washing dishes or taking out the garbage. Currently I have 7800 messages in my gmail account, 780 of them unread. I better get busy. Or not. 

The Economist estimates you will spend almost a decade of your lifetime looking at your phone. Of that time, you’ll spend six weeks deleting messages and email. Who wouldn’t want a six-week vacation?

A few days ago we visited a mountain-top hermitage nearby, a sanctuary with a little 13th century church and rectory. Santuario Eremo Madonna di Saiano is accessible only by foot. The walk up is steep. Just before the final rocky approach, with the church in sight, visitors are asked to remain silent. 

Besides us there was one person up there, in the church, praying. Outside the church, Tizi and I communicated in hand signals. No one would have heard us say “Hey, let’s go over there…” But we kept quiet. In the valley was the Marecchia River. Across the valley, Torello, another castle perched on a rock spur jutting upward. I felt something up there–a vibe, a presence. Tizi would say it’s a holy place. I remember the American poet Robert Bly saying one time, “There is a sadness in nature. There are certain gardens in English, when you enter them, you want to weep.” 

This wasn’t sadness. Maybe it was holy. It was more like peace. A long pause. An exhale. A relief. Anyplace you’ve been, it’s been there forever. The patch of ground beneath your house, it’s been there forever. The river passing under the bridge you’re crossing, it’s been there for all of recorded history, and then some. But here were traces of ancient time. It was a long vibe. Saiano from 13th century Italian Sasso di Giano, from Saxum Jani in Roman times, Jani for Janus, the god of beginnings, looking backward and forward. 

We stayed, stood and looked out over the valley. Afterward we felt a kind of hangover–both of us mentioned it, how that feeling–of the vibe, of the holy–stayed with us. We’ll go back for more.

I now think it’s probably good that my message app doesn’t work. It’s the gift of malfunction. I can’t think of anything that needs my attention today, or yesterday or tomorrow, more than that valley. 

In today’s Washington Post Michael J Coren writes of reviving a 2,600-year-old spiritual practice, putting work aside. No email, no news, no social media, he observes. “Sometimes, I just lie on my back in the park enjoying the sun. It has rekindled a sense of joy I last felt when I was a kid with nothing to do.”  

You don’t need a mountain-top sanctuary. A backyard or park will do. You stop, you sit and listen, you come to rest. There’s no message. And maybe that’s the message.