I love spending a day or two entirely absent from the online life. When the cell phone is useless, my world gets even better. It's hard to BE HERE NOW when I am worrying about what is happening OVER THERE, for instance.
Last week Stewart and I stayed at a cabin bordering the Cherokee National Forest for about twenty hours of being here now-ness. No other humans, no television, no radio, no computer, no phone... just trees, stars, knotty pine, and a hot tub. And boiled peanuts and a bottle of champagne.
One distressing thing about 21st century life is our constant access to everything via the internet and the telephone. I miss attending a festival in a field in which no one is on a cell phone yakking it up or whipping out their laptop, high on wi-fi. In the good old days, one just had to talk to one's neighbors and create community where one happened to be standing.
I have to pay attention to the network I have created with myspace and e-mail, of course. And it has been wonderful this year while my daughter Sarah is Spain to have her talk to me via Skype. And sometimes, contacting a person via myspace is the only way to get an interview for the newspaper. And I can be as obsessive as anybody on a slow day, checking my e-mail fifty times and reading every story on salon.com (or gofugyourself.typepad.com, or the Onion). But when I drive away, I appreciate the vacation from everylittlegoddamnirresistabledetail.
Trying my best to get up offa this thing and be here now -
NTD
1 comment:
Yes, I often long for the old days when you were just thrilled to be able to talk on the phone with your friends at night. We actually did more things with each other as our primary activity...like bike riding or just sitting around playing...LP's!
We'd walk around for miles hoping to run into people and connect. Today's kids are busy connecting with their hi tech gadgets. I barely understand the internet and blogging technology. I love getting e-mails and check a million times a day when I'm around. I've only used a cell phone 4 times ever! It just sits in the car. I guess if I had kids it'd be different.
I love being away from the city. We go on holidays into logging country and sleep and eat in log cabins. No electricity but there is propane lights, stove and fridge. It's beautiful at night when we go on tarps and look up at the sky with no city lights around.
Your cabin get away sounds great.
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