more surfin’, please….

Right in the middle of bitchin’ about how we don’t have a chance to have any “genuine experiences” anymore….that we don’t dig in the record bins surrounded by other people digging in the record bins…that we don’t hide AM radios under our pillows so that we can listen to them at night when our parents are asleep…that it was hard to discover new media, and the fact that it was hard made it more worthwhile….

right in the middle of that “geezerizing” (the GOOOD OLD DAYS!!!), I realize that it is massively cool to be able to run across so much just by a mis-click of the mouse.

That is cool. It really is cool.

Now, maybe it doesn’t mean as much as when it seemed like it was a hunt for the “golden fleece” to track down an elusive record or to get a chance to see a film that they didn’t often show on television.

But who cares, really?

Why does everything have to mean anything?

Maybe it’s fun just to click away and discover another surfing movie that I’ve never heard of….and to be able to watch it for free on YouTube?

I remember the first time that I rented a VCR.

I did rent some tapes with it….but it was the VCR that we didn’t have that was the real revelation.

I could watch a movie when I wanted!! And I wanted to watch “Jeremiah Johnson” right now!! And I had the machine that made it all possible!! In my den with the shag carpet….

That was pretty darn special to be able to watch a movie like that.

That was like entering the “space-age” to be able to rent a Video Cassette Recorder.

So what am I bitchin’ about when I can clickety click and find all this cool stuff?

There’s so much out there floating around in some digital cloud….on a “server” somewhere…my servant, the server…out in space to serve my info needs…there for me when I don’t need it.

Gads…what am I saying?

I’ve been seduced.

Helen and Scott Nearing ate simple food with wooden spoons they probably carved themselves.

They were Luddites.

They didn’t surf a wave and they didn’t surf the internet.

They did just fine without all that stuff in their world.

They lived right in the world, too.

Every minute of it all, there they were.

No clickety, no clackety.

You gonna download some new information? You better crack the spine on that book.

Don’t be staring at some screen with a typewriter in front of it….sit by the window where you can still see….or light that lamp….get the book off the shelf and go at it.

That’s some old school surfin’, there….you know?

Get on up to the library and riffle through the card catalog….find some new book to look at and digest its words.

Geezerizing….I’m too young for “geezerizing”.

I wonder if we appreciate more the things we have to work for?

Check out what I clicked on, though! It’s a surfing movie from 1968!! I was eight years old and we lived in California….and I probably had one of my first library cards.

I clicked on this!! Me!!!

All by myself……

 

About Peter Rorvig

I'm a non-practicing artist, a mailman, a husband, a father...not listed in order of importance. I believe that things can always get better....and that things are usually better than we think.

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