I was in the park this morning and I kept wanting more information. About the tree I was standing under - what kind, how old, what the roots were doing down there. About the bird that kept circling. About the name of the cloud formation, which I could almost remember from school. The world felt like it was holding back something I was owed. I had my phone in my pocket and I had to consciously not take it out for thirty minutes, just to see what it was like to not know things for thirty minutes.

It was uncomfortable for about ten of them and then something shifted. The tree was just a tree. The bird was just doing its thing. I didn't need to index it. But the urge to look things up had become so automatic that not looking felt like deprivation. I think I've stopped trusting my eyes to be enough. I need the label, the caption, the verified information. The unmediated world makes me anxious now. Does that happen to you? Do you experience places differently when your phone is in your hand versus in your bag?