I'm sitting outside in the yard. Mickey is chewing a piece of wood he's been working on for over a year. The thing looks like a dinosaur shoulder bone, and must be about as hard. It was part of the old burn pile, but obviously fire was unable to destroy it. Mickey is doing his best. He's getting down to the marrow. Birds are chirping. The sun is setting. It still lights up some of the trees on the south side of our yard. I'm on the internet. I want to listen to the Salem Red Sox game, so I go to MinorLeagueBaseball.com, click on a link, and am now listening to the game. I could choose just about any minor league game tonight and listen, for free. This is just one example of how Computers + Internet = Great. I have no idea how all this is done, and I don't care... the world will be no better off by me understanding this. It just may be magic. The world wants me to focus my efforts elsewhere. The world told me so. It told me when it made science and math difficult for me. I had no desire. I'm not sure I had/have aptitude. Probably more than some, less than others.
I'm not currently using the technology for good. I'm not using it for evil. I'm not really using it for entertainment. I guess I'm using technology for atmosphere. To recreate the sounds heard form the old radio in my room back home. The one on which (grammar is annoying sometimes) I'd listen to Salem Bucs games in the late 80's (You all remember the exciting title run of 1987 with John Rigos and Kevin Davis, right?). Analog clock with radio dial. It had a god-awful buzzer for wake-up. The same radio we had back in New York. I would sit next to it and use our portable tape recorder to record songs off the radio. Back then I'd call the radio station and request a song, then sit by the radio and wait for them to play it. Some say we are all about instant gratification now. I was into it then, too. Back then, anticipation was gratification. Waiting was fun. Waiting helped pass the time. Having was a bonus. I earned the songs I had on tape. A lot of time went into it. As a song was ending I'd hit record, hoping to catch the beginning of my song. Invariably that would happen a bunch of times before my song came up. I can't be sure of a single song that I tried to get on tape. I'm guessing I was focused on Always Something There to Remind Me by Naked Eyes. We wound up getting that album. I remember when it was an event going to the store and getting a new record. Totally Hot by Olivia Newton John was the first I remember as a group purchase, though perhaps none of the McFarland children would admit to that now.
Back then, anticipation was gratification. That's why baseball is so great. The time and space in between the action is at least as important as the action itself. The time and space on either side of the action... the day before, thirty years later. The cheering and the quiet. It's not just the moment we take the leap, but the time leading up to it and the fondness looking back.
philosophy
No comments:
Post a Comment