We could put it down. Leave the phone in another room. Close the laptop at 8 PM. Walk without a route. But the bull has become part of the posture — a slight forward lean, thumbs ready, eyes half-focused on the middle distance where the next little dopamine hit lives.
And yet, we move. That’s the strange part. The bull — the big, heavy, stubborn thing — is supposed to stay in the field. But ours is portable. We drag it to coffee shops, into bed at midnight, onto hiking trails where the only sound should be wind and bad breathing. portablebull.blogspot.com
This isn’t a Luddite manifesto. I like the toys. I like knowing things instantly, finding obscure songs, texting a friend a dumb joke at 2 AM. But I also miss the old heaviness — the non-portable kind. The weight of a book in a bag. The weight of waiting. The weight of a conversation that doesn’t get interrupted by a buzz. We could put it down
The Weight of the Portable Bull