After months of research and endless internal debate, I bought a Kindle Fire. The act reminded me of a line in one of my books when Matt Jacob thinks that his connection to Jewish ended when the hospital tossed his foreskin into a tray after his birth.

Even though I know it’s not true, it feels as if that one click of “send to shopping cart” severed a connection to hardcover, softcover, coffee table, and every other book in printed form. The Kindle doesn’t and won’t preclude reading any of the above, (I haven’t tossed my vinyl records), but the next step of my evolutionary travel into digital has been taken.

Many friends my age have shied away from e-readers saying they don’t like reading off a screen, they need the feel of a bound book in their hands, and the only time they might ever use one is while traveling.

Not my issues. I spend too many hours at the computer to claim I don’t like reading a screen. I’ve never found myself caressing a leather-bound book, much less a paper one and, I too, think e-readers and their books will make a great traveling companions. So why did I take so long? What’s the big deal?

For me, it’s the feeling that opening up a new door is closing an old one. The image of shoving paperbacks into my rear pocket, the hours under bedroom covers with a small flashlight, the relief books gave me on my boring hour-long bus rides to school, and all the years when the Carteret, N.J. library provided me with a home away from home, replete with its musty smell.

That was then. Now my work life is fully digital. Every penny I earn will come from e-book sales of my original Matt Jacob Mystery Novels (http://zacharykleinonline.com/ matt-jacob-ebooks/) and the new ones in progress. So really, buying the Kindle was anti-climactic; all I did was catch up with myself–and give myself another a tax deduction.

Catching up with myself isn’t easy when it means letting go of what I’ve loved. But I no longer need a home away from home, stuffing books into my back pocket would now give me wallet sciatica, and my days of haunting indie mystery bookstores looking for esoteric authors and titles are over. Hell, Boston no longer has any independent mystery bookstores.

But digital, the Internet, and my turning toward the New Age is much, much larger than Kindles, e-books, and electronic publishing. “The more things change, the more they stay the same” is an old saw that’s often wrong. We live in new technological times which have changed our lives. People debate the better or worse of it; I come out on the “better.” I see the possibility of breaking the corporate stranglehold on what they define as news. I watch information fly around the globe from person to person while governments fail in their attempts to censor because young technologically savvy people find ways around the curtain.

I love the very real probability of developing worldwide communities.

My son has played an international computer game for years. During that time he’s made friends with many people around the globe and learned about their attitudes and cultures–even took a trip to Japan to visit with one of those friends. His do reminds me of my first airplane ride and, I suppose, my purchase of the Kindle. A step into the new.

Given that beasts don’t give up without a fight, it’s way too early to suggest that we live in a “One World” universe, but the glimmer is there. Faint, but there, and that makes the changes we’re going through incredibly worthwhile. Worth letting go of memories or pining for the past. It’s time to take the future–be it a Kindle, online petitions, or reaching large numbers of people with our own personal beliefs in hand to create new memories.

I’d like to believe that my freak flag still flies even though I cut what’s left of my hair and feel pretty good about the look. It is nigh on 2013 after all.

Happy New Year to everyone who has stopped by and I’ll try to keep you thinking, laughing and commenting (and buying some books) all the while I struggle to learn my new machine. Be safe.

“There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear…” Buffalo Springfield