Only Connect

Very soon, according to futurists, technology will have advanced to the point that life will be all but unrecognizable to us. Soon, whole phones will exist in their earpieces. Then we’ll be getting them implanted just under the rug of our scalps and be beaming our thoughts to everyone of our friends and voila! An end to individual consciousness.And with that an end to all Envy, Covetousness, Anger and maybe the rest of the Seven Deadly Sins too, based as they all are in obsessions over who has what and how much we see as rightfully ‘ours’. Just think: mutual ongoing awareness of how it is for the other guy! All joy: shared! All sorrow: instantly felt! Birthday cards valentines, holiday cards: no longer required! Sounds like the afterlife eh?In the meantime though what can we do to feel less marooned, each in a slowly failing vessel, each trapped in the present moment, this one, then this one and this one?Well.... we can talk to one another.Here are three super-short exchanges I had in just in the last 24 hours:

• At the fast food joint, the young woman waiting on me breathed deeply, then kind of lifted her ribcage up out of her lower torso. “Does your back hurt?” I asked her. “Ugh, all of me hurts! I play sports. But yes, my back does hurt. They say I have scoliosis” she said, making a sad face. “A surprising number of people have some degree of scoliosis but they can do much these days.” I said back. “Plus you’re finding out about it good and early.” “I know! I just have to finish growing and then they’ll see” she said with her dazzling young smile.
• An hour later at the electronics store the man processing the paperwork for my new TV looked up when a small child trotted past in a pair of twinkling light-up sneakers. “I want shoes like that!” he said. “They’re all I’ve ever wanted!” “Me too! For those special nights out!” “For tripping the light fantastic!” he said. “But they STILL don’t come in my size!”
• And an hour after that I was in line at the Post Office and called out to Wendy (at the window on the left) to ask how her beloved birds were. She called “Hi Honey!” and gave an upbeat answer. Then, when I brought my package to Sam (at the window in the middle) he shouted, “TT! How you doing TT?!” because he knows that’s what my family calls me. He knows because I must have told him once.

It’s good to tell things, I think. I say let yourself be known, by as many people as you run into in the course of your day and you’ll feel just fine and dandy - until that great new era comes when we experience the Spock-like ‘mind-meld’ said to be just up ahead and waiting. And then: Heaven itself! (maybe!)

Vulcan mindmeld time

Home Again Home Again Jiggity Jig

Home Again Jiggity Jig (sigh)

Back to reality today and feeling just a little bit smug because with all the vice freely available on a cruise-ship I managed to indulge only in Sloth and Gluttony – and all right yes they are two of the Seven Deadly Sins, but look at all I DIDN’T do. I didn't:

(1) Smoke, though smokers were everywhere.

(2) Drink – much. In fact the two of us ended up with a pretty tiny bar bill, especially compared to the one we  racked up a cruise we took 15 years ago with my sister and cousin and our six kids where we found out at voyage’s end that we had drunk the equivalent of a whole other passenger. This was MAYBE because we were younger and wilder ourselves but it was also because the kids were teens and that cruise line's rules were lax and well how could WE know they were downing these tasty red drinks and charging them to their staterooms every night after Taps?

(3) Set so much as one foot in the brightly-throbbing casino.

We’re just not gamblers, the two of us. We're a couple of scholarship kids who just can’t bring ourselves to bet, though I do seem to remember that back when I met him in college Dave did gamble a bit. Mathy little guy that he was, he could count the cards almost a good as Rainman.

So what DID I do? Read. Napped. Spent hours on our stateroom balcony just looking, mesmerized, as that big old ship plunged tirelessly through the blue, blue water.

And oh yeah and I got me a haircut, done by Christopher Marks of Dundee Scotland and the Vidal Sassoon Academy in London:

so that now, instead of having out of style Linda-Evans-in-Dynasty hair:

Or my recent fave. the Fake-Hair-from-the-Mall-for-Weddings-and-Other-Special Occasions-Updo:

I now have whatever THIS is...

and am hoping that its short and sporty feel, together with a the fresh, cruise-induced determination to have more fun generally will bring a matching jauntiness to my whole life..

And NOW! To the foodstore for celery sticks and rice cakes!