Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
Communicate me and you.
First snow on the north shore mountains this morning and when my hand searched for the cel phone to text you my excitement I realized I had left it at home. Plugged into the charger where I left it last night. I am now likely without it until tomorrow evening which suits me fine except that I find myself attached to being able to communicate with my partner, silly thoughts and moments that carry us to one other and alleviate the workaday. I suppose it’s no coincidence that as we have driven ourselves further apart from each other, racing busy critters going from place to place, so the technology that allows us to remain “at home” with our loved ones has developed in tandem.
I have often thought about this on the road, how the laptop and the cel phone make a much easier existence than if I had neither. As important as the kitchenette in my Ottawa suite is the wireless connection that allows me to chat with my friends, my mother, my partner on the nights when I am blockaded in my room by frozen sidewalks and blowing snow. It makes travel less lonely, but it also creates a split in attention to the present because while you are away, not at home, in another physical location – you remain (at least) in mind measure rooted with the people who define home for you.
But so then do the people who miss you exist simultaneously in two places. That home place, and that in-between mediated by wire and fibre – a physical presence also a disembodied thought, a voice not quite there but coming through as a mirage. Warbling and distant it lacks in the same way a photograph can not capture truth but only essence. Sometimes exaggerated, sometimes pale. But something nonetheless to fuel the nights when the embrace is absent, the kiss unreachable, the glance a memory of light only. Not to be cheapened by modernity we knit our connections over distance, we create new mediums to do so. We only move fast enough to just keep up.
One Comment on “Communicate me and you.”
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Red Cedar 
I can totally relate to what you said about being fully present where you are.. or not.. I often feel very in-between two places. It is like I have one foot here.. and one foot in another country. I find it very challenging to be present sometimes. I am grateful for the technology that allows me to keep in touch with my love and my family yet I also want to throw my laptop out the window sometimes.