BuckoRobert Frost wrote in his timeless poem Mending Wall of his neighbor's conviction that "good fences make good neighbors," though there were no cows to fence in or out. Colloquialisms abound in the English language about the need for space. "Absence makes the heart grow fonder." "Familiarity breeds contempt." There is an inherent need in all of us for space. Old Henry David did his best work when sequestered on his Massachusetts pond.
The fact is when I moved up here twenty-seven years ago, the point of that move was to live a lifestyle with space. I don't want to see neighbors, I like them, but I don't want to see them. If I wanted to see neighbors, then any number of myriad suburbs in this country would be adequate. Then I could see Dick and Jane barbecuing every weekend in the next yard, behind their house that looks just like mine except the garage is on the other side. I could put up lovely curtains so that my bathroom window and their bathroom window, though a mere 10 feet apart, would be discreetly hidden. But the fact is, I don't want lovely bathroom curtains. I want to sit in my bathroom and look at the woods. That's why I moved up here.
But there is now an insidious trend sweeping across the land, and the world as it were, threatening my personal space. And that trend is communication. Not normal communication that is the foundation of society and the basis for how we behave, but communication on a massive scale that threatens to overwhelm us in a logjam of information that is too much for this lowly human to process. The frightening thing is that this has happened in just the past 10 years and it happened so fast that I was caught totally unawares until a few months ago when I went to Alaska. There on a salmon river, accessible only by floatplane and 250 miles from the nearest village did I suddenly realize what was missing, or more importantly perhaps what should be missing.
What is missing is the time to think, to create, to let the mind wander into all the possibilities of what you could do, or what you should do. I realized I had not had the time to do that for the past few years. The reason; the barrage of endless communication that sweeps over me day after day. E-mail, cell phones, Blackberries, Internet, voice mail, hot mail, IM, text messaging... For some reason, the more we can communicate, the more we seem to feel the need to communicate. The more we need to communicate, the more we expect response, so that now, lack of instant response is seen as some kind of miscreant behavior.
What if I don't want to talk to you? Does the fact that I don't return your call, or answer your e-mail, make me some kind of social pariah? The fact is, it now does. Over the years when someone said hello to you on the street, you were taught and expected to return a polite response. Now that most of the known world has the ability to say hello to you in an instant, you by centuries of social law are required to respond. Never did the founding fathers (more likely mothers) of etiquette envision this. It's like walking down Fifth Avenue at lunch and having everyone on the street say hello. Think about it.
When I travel, it is never more evident than in the airports and hotels, where poor souls struggle to get from place to place all the while in constant communication with someone somewhere. At some point I foresee a frenzied lemming-like event where we all go flying over the communication overload cliff, cell phones in hand, oblivious to the fact that we are falling.
The other day I stood in line to board a plane and next to me was quite possibly the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, in her mid-forties, perfectly attired and coiffed. A vision of loveliness. At a certain point she turned and smiled, and to my shock and dismay on her ear was a silver contraption with a blue light blinking at me.
"Wow," I said disarmingly, "are you a real Cyborg?" She was not amused. It's bad enough that we carry the things, but now we are being asked to insert them in parts of our body so we can communicate with one person while we stand and communicate with another, or drive, or eat, listen to music, carry on a conversation with the person in the passenger seat and talk to someone else at the same time. This is multi-tasking gone awry.
When a plane lands, it sound like an ice cream truck coming down the aisle as multiple cell phones are turned on. God forbid these people have been out of touch for at least a couple of hours. Damn the airline regulations.
The other day I was driving my oldest son to college and his phone rang at least a dozen times in a two hour period. He never answered, just popped it open and his thumb moved over the keys at light speed as he text messaged his friends with such scintillating prose as "c u n a wil." Translation; "See you in a while." I looked at this cell phone bill the other day and he had a mere 1,000 text messages for the month. That, my friends, is some epic communication. For his generation it is the norm. I cannot imagine what will freak him out in his old age.
This is scary stuff and it's come to Vermont-that supposed oasis of tranquility full of cows, green pastures, red barns and redder foliage. The poster child of the good life. The siren of rural values. But have no doubt, the electronic superhighway is here and the dirt roads of peace, time and tranquility are threatened.
So where does this leave me? I could rebel and refuse to use all these implements of massive missives, but if I do, I will be an outcast. Were I alone, that is exactly what I would do. I would gleefully take my electronics out to the gravel pit and admire the effects of 00 buckshot on a Samsung camera phone with text messaging capability. But I have my family to consider. I could no longer function at my job, communicate with my older children, and find out from my wife where I'm supposed to be at all times. In fact, I have been sucked into the vortex with the rest of you and no matter how hard I swim, I ain't getting out. The best I can do is tread water. The best I can do is grab my ten-year old who has yet to succumb to the need to communicate with the world and take him fishing. For now he is my life raft and the one person in this world with whom I really do want to communicate. The rest of the world will come to him soon enough.◊
Paul Fersen is a regular columnist for
Stratton Magazine.