songs of experience

On public radio today, I heard some reporter estimate there are over a billion people in the blogosphere. It can’t be mere “information exchange” that draws these souls to their flat screens at all hours of the day and night. Is it the need for company? Connection? One friend said we catch up with each other through blogs rather than over a meal (in person) or over the phone … because no one has the time anymore. But, I wonder, how much time do people spend/waste staring at text and images - alone, really, in our rooms or cubicles or bubbles of private laptop space at coffee shops? Too much. We consume “information” on the internet the same way we consume too much fast food and too much stuff at Target and too much gas and too much boring, superficial conversation. Glug glug glug - filling hours and days with a whole lot of nothing. If my computer is on, I can’t NOT look at it … so if any one of my kids happens to enter the room while it’s on, well, they are invisible. This is no good (try saying this while shaking your head with a mock slavic accent … “thees ees snowgood”).

My 4 year-old had a pre-school Easter project where she put a marshmallow inside some dough, pinched the dough all around, then baked it. The marshmallow was to represent Jesus and the dough was his tomb. In the baking, the marshmallow cooks and melts away so that when you break open the bread dough the marshmallow (Jesus) has mysteriously vanished like the risen Christ. I fear too much time on the internet turns one’s life into that marshmallow. You believe you are doing something substancial every time you click on, or log in, or Google search … every time you read some expert’s opinion on whatever current idea is up for consumption. You think your time is being well-spent … surely not wasted. But in your real life - the life of real people (family, friends, co-workers, neighbors) when you break open the dough of your true self … you got nothin’ to give.

But, then again, maybe there is one somebody, somewhere, whose one word - among billions - is enough:

“I am writing at a screen as blue,
as any hill, as any lake, composing this
to show you how the world begins again:
One word at a time.”

- Eavan Boland
from, Against Love Poetry

Is it worth the time it takes to search?
online or off?