Along the steps, into black holes?

Here I am…

3 years and a half after buying my first smartphone for 20 euros -and a prepaid number- here I am, standing in front of one of these trendy telephony-shops without any clue of what to get… Which mobile? Which membership? Which provider? It feels like a mission… from hell. Shopping is already far from being my “forte” but for a smartphone… I am just trapped in the multitude of the given choices; trapped in the web of the “Samsungs”, the “Nokias”, some “Sonys” stretching their lines, the “apples” closing tightly, the “blackberry tribe” on the thread, and the net wrapping its silks around me over the jazzy background music of the shopping center.

Somewhere, I am amazed at the sheer varieties of types of phones, from the obvious to the unknown; but I am completely amazed for the one thing most of them have in common: you can get your trendy phone for “free” -or for a symbolic price of 1something- as long as you commit to a 24 months membership and an incredible high monthly cost, and this nearly whatever provider chosen.

24 months, 2 years, 700 days and more. And I thought from all my reading in the news that commitment was out of fashion. It seems, that does not apply to your internet, TV or phone provider.

It’s true; breaking up with your service provider will cost you a lot less than breaking up with your partner. And it’s true somewhere, you don’t really own the phone, you pay it as credit and as soon as paid you will moved onto the next model. And it’s also true that most of us -actually all of us- have no certitude of where we would be in two years.

There is something interesting nowadays, a weird funny feeling on how we look at controlling so many things in that ever changing world we are swimming through. Are we just happy in the illusion? Can a “certitude” on a mobile phone contract an illusion onto which we build foundations and dreams? Are the rocks we are anchoring onto so flimsy? Do we need rocks?

Maybe the art is just about going along the steps and into black holes, passing through them as if we were diving into a dark river keeping an eye on the lighthouse we already see on the shore on the other side.

I am in one of them just now…

I am in one of my black holes. I have a brand new mobile phone all right, and maybe the only existing non-binding contract on the local market, still I have to pass through that hole. I have that great image at 3 or 4 years from now, an amazingly beautiful shore, so full of people, feelings, love, respects, drawings, cartoons; but today my feet has already slipped into the hole; I am diving breathless; it’s pitch dark, it’s cold, it’s tiring, and it’s worth it. This is my only certitude, my only rock; I know the shore is just amazing. I have no idea where each step taken in my black holes is going. I have no idea if they are the right steps. I only know they have to be taken. I may have my 4th resolution of the year:

KEEP YOUR SHIRT ON AND KEEP SWIMMING!