After yesterday’s fiasco wrestling with techno gadgetry, here I am sitting in the backyard with old fashioned wide ruled cheap notebook paper that I bought for 97 cents the 1/3 ream at Wal-Mart.
I retrieved my fountain pen with the medium nib (more reliable than the fine nib, though less elegant). I sat down to write in the scribble book, and behold, the pen was out of ink! (Even low tech technology has it’s problems). So back to the little desk in the cupboard for the ink bottle I went.
This time, I did not drop the nib in the bottle. This did not however save me from acquiring inky fingers. So once again I am covered in purple ink.
(What does this have to do with anything you ask?)
You WOULD.
I suppose it’s another example of the dichotomy of living with one emotional foot in the past, where writers dip their pens in ink and smear it on various and sundry flat surfaces. And one foot in the future, where you spend a lot of time and money goofing around trying to get your computer to do it for you, in a completely different format. (Electrons vibrating on cathode ray tubes)
But I endure this intellectual disconnect . . .
(We SEE that you are intellectually disconnected all right. . .)
You’re SO kind.
I ENDURE because I want to communicate. And the quickest way to do that is to negotiate some sort of truce with this zero and one shuffling bimbosity in front of me. This putty colored whirring box of disposable already obsolete plastic and metal plug and play (ha!) circuit boards and cooling fans.
So I re-transcribe my purple scribbles into this electronic format that can be scattered far and wide by a process I barely understand. The thing is, a letter written to a friend has always been a bargain. A few cents on a stamp and away it goes to it’s destination. But if we added up the cost of the computer and all it’s peripheries, plus connection charges etc., one wonders if we are getting our money’s worth!
OR, have we been completely duped by the technology monolith (imagine 2001 Space Odyssey music) into thinking we are dealing with something that’s THIS close to “magic”?
I guess I just can’t stop worrying this bone. I wonder about it a lot. And depending on your point of view, you have to suffer through, or you get to laugh at my wrestling match.
Please, DO NOT tell me who you think is winning.
All this thinking has made me sleepy. I am going to go take an old fashioned, no tech nap.