Portable Charger

When USB Mini-As & medieval prisons don’t work together.

We can have the greatest solo adventures.

Picking our route. Taking the detours that call out to us.

Maybe you walk to where the Globe Theater once stood, find a authentic pirate ship, and see a sign labeling a building the “most notorious medieval prison—voted by the people” 

You take all the pictures you want. Windows that feel like metaphors. Videos of your favorite song playing on a colorful street you’ve never seen before. You track down the real London Bridge that locals were adamant about having no towers on it and say looks rather plain, but you wanted to see the namesake of the creepy nursery rhyme. You use the maps app and research “pubs near me” or “The Clink visiting hours” because now you have to see inside the most notorious medieval prison—voted by the people. 

You hit the afternoon with 25% phone battery. You decide to be preemptive, proactive, responsible; you start charging your phone since you know you’ll need it to navigate or maybe check in. 

The cord doesn’t fit. 

How?

Do we blame Apple for switching port structures so many times that you have so many lying around? Even though the one you grabbed is the one that would fit your flip phone from 5th grade and not the last 4 smart phones you’ve had? 

You feel like an idiot. How could you do this? You should’ve been more conservative, but you thought you had it figured out. You thought you had a plan. That you were doing everything right. 

Now your battery is vulnerable. You feel vulnerable too. 

For a moment you swear you’ll never leave the house again. You take a deep breath and sigh instead of letting your head fall in your hands. 

Some things just don’t connect the way we thought they would. The way we planned for. 

Maybe next time you check what’s in your bag twice before you leave the house. 

Or you don’t check Instagram on a day out.

Or you keep a close eye on your battery.

We become cautious. We learn. We change.

But right now find your way home. 

Tune in. Use your senses. Be aware of your surroundings. 

There was a time when the flip phone charger was the only charger in the world you needed. Or that, and your school Chromebook charger. Maybe you need to adapt even more than companies need to develop adapters. Try new things. Figure out what works for you. 

But don’t stop taking solo adventures. Maybe while you smooth out the bugs, bring a reliable friend along who has a history of efficient hitchhiking. 

While I did stumble across the most notorious medieval prison—voted by the people—the concept of a USB Mini-A is a fictional scenario meant to be a universal metaphor for whatever it makes you think of and whatever you currently connect the concept of trial and error with in your own life. You will figure it out.

Being patient with yourself is the best charger.

Innocently Intimate International Interactions

This summer, I went to three new countries. Here are a few of my favorite international interactions from my trip. All full of kindness. Heart. Connection. Courage.

And language was the least important part.

In London…

I saw a couple lying in Regent’s Park under a blanket, with a guy reading a book held in front of a girl, his arms wrapped around her, him leaning them against a tree.

I spoke with my Harry Potter tour guide, who, when I said I was from New Jersey (after having him guess, of course) eagerly asked about my recommendations for his winter trip to Freehold, New Jersey, to see all things Bruce Springsteen. With a huge, surprised smile, I told him he picked the wrong month and gave him all the travel tips I could as someone who has, all my life, lived 30 minutes away from the spots he will be flying across the Atlantic to see.

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In Paris…

I looked in a store window and saw a man holding a woman’s face with a gaze as powerful as if she just agreed to marry him.

Springsteen records sold out for the street sale in Paris

My friend and I were photobombed at Moulin Rouge by strangers in what became some of our favorite pictures from the trip.

A proud father and his daughter asked us to take a photo of them with a smile, handing us their phone and pouring us some of their wine as a thank you— no English was exchanged.

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In Venice…

I saw a kid who must have been in middle school walk back toward his family from the opposite direction, shaking his head and emphatically motioning, declaring “there is no Ice Cream down this street! No Ice Cream!”

A road sign I’d never seen until the first day I landed on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean

My friend and I started dying of laughter at the weight of his message. It seemed like we witnessed the middle of an argument on directions from a fellow American who, like me, does not mess around about his Ice Cream (or *Gelato).

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A lifelong Venetian painter asked where I was from, and then asked if I knew Perth Amboy. I said “Of course,” surprised at the specificity of his question. He said he’d bought a car there once. “Why?” I laughed. He replied the sales tax in New York made buying a car in New Jersey a better option.

He told me about driving around America in his 20s. He told me about his family and the room he paints with his palette knife. This stranger who I’d known for 5 minutes told me he was proud I had a full time job out of school. Trying to translate in his head, he said, “Are you… alone… are you… married?” I told him I was “single” and his face lit up with all the types of adventures I should take in America, as if he was writing me into a Tom Petty song. As much as he loves his kids, he said, he looked at me with knowing eyes and said this was my time.

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At Passport Control in Newark, New Jersey…

I overheard an exhausted and playful family with some good comebacks to each other. “You’re a troll. None of us have had enough sleep to be roasting each other’s passports.”

In the same line, strangers across generations exchanged an “I LOVE your dress” and an ecstatic “Oh, thank you!”

The Current

As a third grade student, I had to submit a “current event” every week.

I dreaded it.

Struggling to find the news articles, understand the facts, and then summarize them in my own words was redundantly frustrating. But when given a creative assignment, my mind ran wild.

As an adult out of school, I don’t have to report news findings. And no one is asking me to squeeze my words into the acrostic, haiku, or sonnets formats that we were taught.

The Current is meant as a free flowing outlet of ideas.

From blog to blobs to bars.

News is all around us, whether it’s an observation of our existence, a new opportunity, or a simpler way to keep tropical plants alive during the New Jersey winter.

As one of so many with a busy mind, and someone the Apple Store employee thought was crazy for asking how to connect my notes app to CarPlay, I hope The Current can help give others some lightbulbs. Or my puns can brighten their day. No matter the subject, I like to keep an element of light.

Let’s Plug In.