I’d heard about the glorious iPod from many of my friends and didn’t understand its appeal. So, you have this little device that plays your favorite music—so what? I purchased one as an M.F.A. graduation gift in May—especially because my car didn’t have a working CD player. I figured that it would cost me about the same to get the CD player fixed.

For awhile I only had about 700 songs—about 60 albums or so. I’d drive around Denver, listening to my favorite tunes, thinking—hey, this iPod is pretty amazing. It’s so easy to use, so compact, and you can take it running, driving, traveling, whatever. My friends didn’t understand how I could tolerate listening to the same few albums over and over again, but I had no idea what I was missing at the time.

Then I brought my iPod out here to the Philippines. Now I think the iPod is glorious. I spent many hours downloading (and re-downloading) music from Matt’s hard drive to build my song cache up to about 2,500 hundred songs, which still is nothing really. But—all the songs on my iPod are fantastic. And that’s only the half of it.

My iPod has turned into a transporter or magician. I put on the headset, and instantly I’m in another place, in another time. You know how it is. It’s just that much more poignant when you’re halfway around the world from your life. A song comes on and suddenly I’m dancing around my house with Matt, listening to a live concert, driving in the car with my mom, or hanging out with friends. In one moment it summons up my past emotions, memories—I feel like someone on the Star Trek Enterprise, beamed into a new world. This is why I’ve named my iPod Scottie.

I’m currently listening to The Pixies’ “Hey” for the sixth time in a row. Yeah—I have over 2500 other songs to choose from, but I like the world I’m in.

Beam me up.