Thoughts from my trip...
So I flew from Texas to Georgia on Saturday. I won't bore you with travel details (besides the point that I spent the weekend in Texas, and didn't see anyone in a cowboy hat until the Dallas airport. And she was getting on a plane to Atlanta.), but I did notice something that struck me as sad. In theory, at the airport, life was buzzing around me. But when I sat to people watch, I noticed something disturbing. No one does anything in public anymore. Chair after chair of strangers and they were all on the phone, or listening to their iPods, or watching DVDs on their laptops, or playing minesweeper. A bunch of sad, cynical travelers disconnecting themselves from their surroundings. They're more interested in conversing with people they already know, and having mass produced experiences. Two people watching romantic comedies on their iPods, sharing dreams of strangers meeting through fate, but too scared to bother dealing with a stranger in their own life. I wanted to scream.
I board my flight, and squeeze past the grumpy couple next to me to my window seat. The guy looks like a cross between Chevy Chase and David Carradine. He's got David's hair and complexion, but Chevy's face and build. I say "excuse me" and he returns it. These will be the only words we use the entire flight. As we wait on the runway, the guy behind me has already fallen asleep and is snoring loudly. It's 5:00 in the afternoon. I listen intently for conversations, and only hear two. Both of them are about banking. The couple in front of me obviously don't know each other, and are beginning a shy, awkward conversation. About banking. He's late 30's, or early 40's, has glasses, a wedding ring, and a smooth persona. She has red curly hair, and that's all I can see from my seat. She sounds friendly, and comparable in age to him. We start to lift off and I watch out the window. We rise above the overcast clouds, and they look like a white mountain range covering the land below. Flat fields pockmarked with houses and scarred with golf courses. There are more clouds above us, and clouds beneath us, it's like we're in a sky sandwich. The guy behind me is still snoring, Chevy Carradine is reading his spy novel, and the man in front of me has managed to get a few good laughs from the redhead in front of me. She has a great laugh. Were I ten years older, or she ten years younger, I'd be jealous. As it is, I turn on my iPod (the Cake-Clash-Cowboy Mouth-Cracker section) and read my book (The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay). The stewardess offers me a drink, but I'm already feeling like I'd need to pee, and the last thing I want to do is have to climb over Chevy and the somber woman on a laptop in my way. So I just continue to chew my gum. I keep getting distracted by the window, with clouds making shapes around me as we rise above the top layer to the actual sky. The sun is going down, or we're fleeing the horizon, but either way, I make a wish on the first star I see, only to realize that it wasn't a star, but Venus. I wonder, not for the first time, how many wishes I've wasted on planets and planes. I'm getting a headache and can't focus on my book so I read the inflight magazine. A large portion of it was dedicated to complaining about rookie travelers. Now I fall into this category, as I've never been in the income bracket for casual flights, and my family is all within driving distance, so I read this section with interest. Apparently, among the chief things that annoy frequent fliers, besides forgetting boarding passes, and wearing lace up boots through security, is people being excited about flying. There were several reader complaints about people who always watch takeoffs, and are always interested by what's going on. I know I shouldn't let this bother me. I mean, these are the kind of people who write in to in-flight magazines, for God's sake, but it irked me. I know slightly more than most about how flight works. I mean, I've got the principles of drag, thrust, lift, and gravity down, and have a basic understanding of air pressure. But I'm still amazed by the concept of flying. I mean, come on people, we take a few tons and send it across the world in the air, just through proper application of physics. And we do it in such a way that we can still serve alcohol! How does this not move us each time? We've only been doing it for one hundred years or so. Hell, most people will stare at a fire for a while, and we've had that for millennia. We begin our descent, and I look out the window at the lights as my ears rebel over the sudden change in pressure. It hurts like hell. I notice Chevy looking out the window, but trying to look like he isn't. We land and I put the battery in my cell phone (can't figure out how to turn the darned thing off) and call my ride. Everyone else on the plane does the same. As we file out, I notice that the curly redheaded woman has made plans to meet the man on Friday. She has a wedding ring, too. And a sharp nose. I still can't hear out of my left ear as I file through the terminal, past all of the people on their cell phones, iPods and laptops.
I know it's not exactly a novel question to ask how technology is dividing us, and cutting us off from each other, but am I the only one sad to see us all retreating into our own little worlds? Even me, I'll shut the world out, because it seems to be shutting me out. What does it take to reach past that? How can we expect people to break through our shields when we're so focused on developing technology for shutting out the undesirable, but not on acquiring the desirable? I don't know. Maybe I just need more sleep.
I board my flight, and squeeze past the grumpy couple next to me to my window seat. The guy looks like a cross between Chevy Chase and David Carradine. He's got David's hair and complexion, but Chevy's face and build. I say "excuse me" and he returns it. These will be the only words we use the entire flight. As we wait on the runway, the guy behind me has already fallen asleep and is snoring loudly. It's 5:00 in the afternoon. I listen intently for conversations, and only hear two. Both of them are about banking. The couple in front of me obviously don't know each other, and are beginning a shy, awkward conversation. About banking. He's late 30's, or early 40's, has glasses, a wedding ring, and a smooth persona. She has red curly hair, and that's all I can see from my seat. She sounds friendly, and comparable in age to him. We start to lift off and I watch out the window. We rise above the overcast clouds, and they look like a white mountain range covering the land below. Flat fields pockmarked with houses and scarred with golf courses. There are more clouds above us, and clouds beneath us, it's like we're in a sky sandwich. The guy behind me is still snoring, Chevy Carradine is reading his spy novel, and the man in front of me has managed to get a few good laughs from the redhead in front of me. She has a great laugh. Were I ten years older, or she ten years younger, I'd be jealous. As it is, I turn on my iPod (the Cake-Clash-Cowboy Mouth-Cracker section) and read my book (The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay). The stewardess offers me a drink, but I'm already feeling like I'd need to pee, and the last thing I want to do is have to climb over Chevy and the somber woman on a laptop in my way. So I just continue to chew my gum. I keep getting distracted by the window, with clouds making shapes around me as we rise above the top layer to the actual sky. The sun is going down, or we're fleeing the horizon, but either way, I make a wish on the first star I see, only to realize that it wasn't a star, but Venus. I wonder, not for the first time, how many wishes I've wasted on planets and planes. I'm getting a headache and can't focus on my book so I read the inflight magazine. A large portion of it was dedicated to complaining about rookie travelers. Now I fall into this category, as I've never been in the income bracket for casual flights, and my family is all within driving distance, so I read this section with interest. Apparently, among the chief things that annoy frequent fliers, besides forgetting boarding passes, and wearing lace up boots through security, is people being excited about flying. There were several reader complaints about people who always watch takeoffs, and are always interested by what's going on. I know I shouldn't let this bother me. I mean, these are the kind of people who write in to in-flight magazines, for God's sake, but it irked me. I know slightly more than most about how flight works. I mean, I've got the principles of drag, thrust, lift, and gravity down, and have a basic understanding of air pressure. But I'm still amazed by the concept of flying. I mean, come on people, we take a few tons and send it across the world in the air, just through proper application of physics. And we do it in such a way that we can still serve alcohol! How does this not move us each time? We've only been doing it for one hundred years or so. Hell, most people will stare at a fire for a while, and we've had that for millennia. We begin our descent, and I look out the window at the lights as my ears rebel over the sudden change in pressure. It hurts like hell. I notice Chevy looking out the window, but trying to look like he isn't. We land and I put the battery in my cell phone (can't figure out how to turn the darned thing off) and call my ride. Everyone else on the plane does the same. As we file out, I notice that the curly redheaded woman has made plans to meet the man on Friday. She has a wedding ring, too. And a sharp nose. I still can't hear out of my left ear as I file through the terminal, past all of the people on their cell phones, iPods and laptops.
I know it's not exactly a novel question to ask how technology is dividing us, and cutting us off from each other, but am I the only one sad to see us all retreating into our own little worlds? Even me, I'll shut the world out, because it seems to be shutting me out. What does it take to reach past that? How can we expect people to break through our shields when we're so focused on developing technology for shutting out the undesirable, but not on acquiring the desirable? I don't know. Maybe I just need more sleep.