The first phone or tablet app that really thrilled me was one of those night sky star-mapping apps. I could stand outside and hold the phone up against the heavens and locate anything in the cosmos that anyone else had found before, and know its name. Where am I? The app had a pretty compelling answer, relative to the rest of the known universe. Dip it below the horizon, and I could see the sun and planets straight through the ground, and the stars clear across the galaxy. I would stand with that perfect little window of augmented reality in my hand, the earth itself falling away as infinite space rushed in, the stuff of fantasy and dreams and memory.

What can this little piece of plastic and metal and glass do? Why, it can bring you to the fucking stars, is all. All right, man—sold.

Ten or eleven years later, now, and the thrill has never been repeated. A “thrill” is not even something I would expect of my phone, anymore. Amazon wants to use “augmented reality” to show me how the toaster I might buy will look on my counter, or how each television I might order—either this large black rectangle or that large black rectangle—will look in my living room. Dare to dream! Be still, my heart.

What was once so cool is now not just mundane, but punishingly so. Where was I? My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I have an email from my daughter’s preschool about the spring community volunteering effort. Where was I? My phone vibrates in my pocket, and my Fit app wants to know if I want to adjust my weekly movement goals. Asshole—where was I? My phone vibrates in my pocket, and the New York Times wants me to read a feature about the big business of being a Kardashian. Where was I? My phone vibrates in my pocket, and Twitter says there’s a recent tweet by a journalist I follow that I might like to see, and twenty others I might have missed. Where was I? My phone vibrates in my pocket, and Facebook tells me that today is some middle school acquaintance’s birthday. Where was I?

My phone is set to silent, and I reach for it—to check the weather, or check what time the Braves play, or to send a text about something I just heard on the radio—but before I can do that, I swipe through the notifications tray. To get back to zero. To reset. To find the bottom. Twitter says Trump tweeted. My kid’s kindergarten teacher added a new note to the Homeroom app. Facebook has my memories to look back on. Fourteen people I follow recently added to their Instagram stories—wouldn’t I like to see? ESPN says Roger Federer is a golden god in Miami. I have 13 new emails. Would I like to play the daily crossword? Three of the podcasts I listen to have new episodes. Amazon has a deal on a wireless router I might be interested in, based on my recent browsing history. Perhaps I’d like to see what it would look like on the shelf, first?

Where was I?

Right, looking up a recipe for dinner. Would I like to check for coupons for these ingredients, redeemable at nearby stores? Traffic is heavier than usual for this time of day, the phone says. The credit card bill is due in two days, the phone says. Updating shared location, the phone says. Where was I? Seeking purchase. Trying to find the bottom.

If I take the phone outside tonight, and find a star-mapping app, will it hold my attention? How many notifications will push in, before the earth has a chance to fall away, and infinite space can rush in? Now the screen is too bright, I can’t see the stars in the sky behind the glass. I look away, look up, and my eyes see nothing but the great gray smear, vision seared blind by the blue light. Or maybe it's just everyone else's screens lighting up the night sky from below, washing out the dark, graying away the stars. I could fire up the right app, and tilt my head to the sky to see where the stars are meant to be, if I could see them anymore. Where was I?

I have a feeling, a thought I have more and more frequently, that I should take the phone and throw it out the window, to find the nearest brick wall, to see what happens when you take a magical supercomputer in your hand and throw it as hard as you can into something solid and real. Seeking purchase, trying to find the bottom. I don’t suspect that this thing into which I pour so much of my attention doesn't actually mean anything—I know it. I don’t suspect that I would be better off without it—I know it.

The low, constant, fevered anxiety is not the diagnosis but the treatment for symptoms whose cause I still remember—because I hold it in my hand—but won’t give up. I am all exposed nerves and bile and perfect rhythm, on my phone, a little well-practiced routine, alone together, watching the dancing ellipses. The fear is that any attempt to control it is just being obstinate to progress, betraying a secret wish to smash it all against the hardened red clay. We don't have to go back very far, actually, just a few years, we don’t have to tear it all down. Seeking purchase. A minor adjustment. Trying to find the bottom. But that's what the troglodytes always say, isn’t it—that the road branched and we took the wrong path, but absolution is only a little ways back.

I’ll walk outside tonight, and start the star-mapping app, and watch the collapse of metaphor and memory into known knowns, watch it flatten the wonder and possibility of the whole universe into informational certainty, filling up all the quiet. Because I’m not willing to tell the difference, now, between what matters, and what doesn’t.

And for what? For the low, fevered anxiety that I apparently prefer to the possibility of silence, exchanged for the accrual of moments of my consciousness that I’ll never remember anyway, but are of immense interest to the attention merchants, who demand nothing, who get everything. To keep me always churning for the bottom. Constantly seeking purchase.

Where was I?