Hello again. I flew to San Francisco for work today. I do this every three months. Sometimes I mind doing it, other times I don't. I'm never terribly excited about it though.
Airports are not particularly inspiring places. Sure there is poetry in some of the moments that occur: the reunion, striking out on your own, kicking off a well-earned vacation, etc. But ultimately they're just a fragile physical mirror for the new interconnectivity that we experience in our day-to-day life: messaging a man a china about fingerboard trucks, sending money to the Ukraine, the arab spring in 2010, etc. I'm drinking a red wine so bear with me.
The digital interface we have created for ourselves seems to fold space in on itself allowing us to extend our reach far beyond our bodies. But as we are finding with the Zoom calls of the pandemic era, it isn't a perfect substitute for actual physical presence. If my life is so tightly integrated with that of a man in China assuming I am a fingerboard business titan then how do I effectively communicate if the shortcomings of zoom-style internet communication reveal themselves. I have to fly to see him
Some of you may get the idea that I'm some kind of global warming warrior. One of those doomsayer types that talk about how we need to reach net zero emissions of whatever by 2030 or else some really bad crap happens. I'm not really that. But I am interested in building a life and a world that is aware of its limitations. "Eat local" is a refrain you may have heard from a person wearing patagonia or a sticker you may have read on someones brand new subaru impreza crossover hatchback. I am going to start a new phrase here: "Live local". Now before you accuse me of being a damn hip-o-crit because I have a job that is not "local" let me remind you that I, as do you, live in a society. Not in the joker sense, but in the regular sense.
All of this Zoom crap has set us up for disappointment in a way. Gradually expanding the radius of our Sphere until the it collapses in on the weight of itself. I can become friends with Bogdan and be convinced that we are actually good friends just long enough to be hurt when I am met with the reality of thousands of miles of sea and land dividing us.
The prospect of air travel provides us a false comfort. Oh, me and bogdan enjoy playing minecraft I can go visit and hang out with him whenever I want. Oh, my globalist-style job wants me to move to the Fiji Islands for some reason for 5 years, I can just visit my wife and kids by flying to them. The reality eventually sets in though and these relationship fracture as a result of the physical distance. The two things that made it possible for these sorts of situations: zoom and air travel are also the things that eventually tighten and constrict around them. I can only facetime with you for so long. I can only fly to see you so often.
Now I am being dramatic. Most of the time it is fine. My friendship with Bogdan exists on the zoom-style things so I don't ever really expect it to be a real physical friendship. My wife and kids survive and are happy to see me come home from the Fiji islands after a more realistic 1 year stint abroad. I fly to San Francisco 4 times a year and am able to maintain enough of a physical presence in the office for people to remember me. Zoom and it's relatives are fine. Flying is fine. It gets you to places. But I do think that people talk about a global world as if we have shed our physical bodies and are no longer bound by the laws of the physical world. But we can't realize that sort of world through flying alone.
Anyways, signing off. -will
