far and away

this is going to sound stupid, but air travel is pretty medieval. not literally of course. literally, if you'd told someone in the middle ages that soon enough people would get into huge phallic metal boxes with wings and 200 plus other people and thus be able to travel 3000 miles in a mere eleven hours, that middle ages person would have been mighty impressed.

but this is the future as t.g. pointed out sunday when we were video chatting with our six week old nephew for whom that will be totally normal. so the yelled at by crazy woman in security, ban on drinking water nevermind hand lotion nevermind cup of yogurt, take everything out of your bag, disrobe entirely, not making anyone feel or be safer fiasco that is the airport, followed by the very teeny spaces, we are going to charge you fifty bucks for that exit row, we are going to feed you six mini pretzels in five hours, and please don't even fantasize about being able to pick up that pencil you just dropped because it ain't gonna happen that is flying, followed by the waiting for an hour after just to find out that they didn't bring your luggage then waiting in line to tell them about how they didn't bring your luggage then being promised it will be there by 3:00 the next day then 5:00 then 6:30, nevermind your dinner reservations, and no one ever saying wow we're sorry we lost your luggage, well that's crap travel. medieval. our children (or maybe theirs or maybe theirs) will consider these tales with the horror with which i regard lack of indoor plumbing, no central heat, and most aspects of medieval life.

in the vast expanse of human history, this tale of woe is going to be our hallmark i think. our lives are marked in so many ways by being so far away from so many of the people we love so much. can you imagine that that wouldn't be totally formative? so many of the people we love are somewhere else all the time! how can we survive with so much love somewhere else? in the middle ages, very few people had this problem because they didn't love people far away. folks mostly stayed put and loved people nearby. soon enough we'll have, i don't know, bullet trains, teleportation, a pod system...something. how far from video chatting can that possibly be? so really, it's only this time and this place -- this blip -- with all this far away love. and it's unacceptable to me. un-ac-ceptable. physicists: no one even cares about string theory. where's the teleporting?

meantime, some of you -- and you know who you are -- really need to move to seattle. or invent teleportation. or buy an iteleporter. or an ipodsystem. but not that kind.

--mtg