Connected

July 22, 2014

     Yesterday afternoon, July 20, the phone line was at last functional.  To make it so, that morning I had to drive to the Orange boutique in Carcassonne to buy a black plastic gadget with a T-shaped protuberance on one side, a gizmo I thought I saw in one of the boxes of gadgets associated with setting up phone, internet and TV, but could not locate.  Bringing it home, I had to snap the T-shaped end of the piece into another gadget already plugged into the outlet for the phone in the kitchen, then snap a cord into the bottom of the gadget the other end of which I had to insert into the base of the mobile phone.  The set-up is definitely France's version of a "Rube Goldberg", but once the interlocking parts were in place, Voila!  --I could make unlimited calls to the U.S. and anywhere in "Europe" (not sure what that means).

     I placed the original order for service in late April of this year.  I spent hours on the telephone from New York, trying to set all up before I arrived.  "Orange" has an anglophone line, but I never spent less than 90 minutes waiting to speak to someone --who usually put me on hold for an almost equally long period of time and who was never able to help me.  I arrived in Caunes June 16, but the box with all the gadgets needed to set up the TV, phone and internet much later.  A technician came two weeks ago, but said there was a problem with the line.  A technician came yesterday and told me I just needed the black gadget, un embaut, and a fil téléphonique, to have service.   I realize now that the local electrician who set up the internet and television last Tuesday, as well as trying to set up the phone, mistakenly plugged the cord which should have gone into the embaut into the phone base.  He also told me to throw the embaut away as unnecessary, while warning me that I had to keep the boxes from Orange the cable box and other gadgets came in because when I gave up the phone line I would have to return the equipment to the company in them.

     To test the line, I made a call to a family member and two calls to friends in New York. The reception was clear as a bell.  Having international phone service, I suddenly felt as though the distance between Caunes and New York had shrunk to the length of the fil éléctronique --the electric wire plugged into the embaut.  And as the phone rang with unexpected calls I leapt to grab, I knew a kind of vertigo, a swooning sensation, a sudden presentiment that by setting up a phone line on which the world could reach me, the world might crowd in.  My isolation ended, I started to miss it.