communication

now that we have the information superhighway, we can throw out into the open our screams, our cries for help, so much faster than we could before.

our pleas become computer blips - tiny bits of energy travelling through razor thin wires, travelling through space, to be left for someone to decipher when they find the time.

got into work the other day and got my messages out of voice mail: mike left me his pager number and told me to contact him with some information, tom told me to call him at the office between ten thirty and noon, jason told me to check my email because he sent me a message i had to read.

so i first returned tom’s phone call but he wasn’t in, so i left a message with a coworker. and then i dialed the number for mike’s pager listened to a beep, then dialed in my own phone number. then i got online, checked my email read a note from ben, emptied out the junk mail.

realizing i didn’t actually get a hold of anybody, i tried to call my friend sheri but i got her answering machine, so i said, “hi - it’s me, janet - haven’t talked to you in a while - “ at which point i realized there was nothing left to say - “so, give me a call, we should really get together and talk.”

sara and i were late for carol’s wedding rehearsal, which was a bad thing, because we were both standing up in the wedding, and we were stuck in traffic, and i asked, “sara, you have a cel phone, don’t you?” and she said “yes.” and i asked, “well, do you know carol’s cel phone number, cause if you do, we can call her and tell her we’ll be late ?” and she said, “no - do you know it?” and i said “no.”

I was out at a bar with Dave, and I was explaining to him why I hadn’t talked to my friend Aaron in a while: “You see, we usually email each other, and when we do, we just hit ‘reply.’ when you get an email from someone, instead of having to start a new letter and type in their email address, you can just hit the ‘reply’ button on the email message, and it will make a letter addressed to the person who wrote you the letter originally. so he sent me a letter once, and it had a question at the end, so i hit ‘reply’ and sent a response, with another question at the end of my letter. so we kept having to answer questions for each other, and we just kept replying to each other, sending a letter with the same title back and forth to each other without ever having to type in the other’s address. well, once i got an email from him and there was no question at the end, and so i didn’t have to send him a response. so i didn’t. and we never thought to start a new email to one another. so we just lost touch.”

and then it occurred to me, how difficult it had become to type an extra line of text, to type in his email address, because that’s why i lost touch with him.

and then it occurred to me, no matter how many different forms of communication we have, we’ll still find a way to lose touch with each other.

now that we have the information superhighway, we can throw out into the open our screams, our cries for help, so much faster than we could before.

but what if we don’t want to communicate? or forget how, too busy leaving messages, voice mails, emails, pager numbers, forgetting to call back...

what if we forget how to communicate?

i wanted to purchase tickets for a concert but i was shopping with my sister and wasn’t near a ticket outlet but my sister said, “i have a portable phone, you can call them if you’d like.” so she gave me the phone, and i looked at all these extra buttons, and she said, “just press the ‘power’ button, but hold it down for at least four seconds, until the panel lights up, then dial the number, but use the area code, because this phone is a 630 area code, then press ‘send’. when you’re done with the call, just press ‘end’, and make sure the light turns off.”

so i turned it on, dialed the number, pressed ‘send’, pressed my head against the tiny phone. and the line was busy, and i couldn’t get through.

i checked my email address book recently, and the people i email the most are the people that live in the same city as me, all of whom i know the phone numbers of, all of whom are only a local call away. in fact, one of my friends lives a block and a half away from me, on the same street as me, but i still email her as much as i call her, even though i could just walk over to her house and have an actual conversation with her.

i was suntanning outside on my patio with a friend on saturday, and we decided we wanted to order a pizza. we brought a cordless phone outside with us so we would know if the phone in the house rang, so i picked it up and dialed.

and the phone needed to be recharged, the batteries were wearing down, because there was so much static that i was worried the pizza man wouldn’t even be able to hear my voice.

while waiting for the pizza man to pick up the phone, i said, mocking static on the line, “hi, i’m calling from the space shuttle, i’d like to order a pizza for delivery. call mission control at houston for a credit card number.”

i got a program for my computer. it’s a phone book program, and it sorts people by name or company, lists their phone number, and has a complete file for them where you can store their birthday, their address, past addresses and phone numbers, faxes, email addresses, there’s room for any information you want to store about them.

and i love this program, i’ve created a file with all the phone numbers i’ve ever needed, i always add information to this file, i keep a copy of it on my computer at home, on my computer at work, on my laptop, even on a floppy disk, in case there’s a fire at work and my hard drive at home crashes.

but it always seems that every time i desperately need a phone number i’m nowhere near a computer.

any computer.

i wanted to get in touch with an old friend of mine from high school, vince, and the last i heard was that he went to marquette university. well, that was five years ago, he could be anywhere. i talked to a friend or two that knew him, but they lost touch with him, too. so i searched on the internet, to see if his name was on a website or if he had an email address. he didn’t. so i figured i probably wouldn’t find him. and all this time, i knew his parents lived in the same house they always did, i could just look up his parent’s phone number in the phone book and call them, say i’m an old high school friend of vince’s, but i never did. and then i realized why.

you see, i could search the internet for hours and no one would know that i was looking for someone. but now, with a single phone call, i’d make it known to his entire family that i wanted to see him enough to call, after all these years. and i didn’t want him to know that. so i never called.

now that we have the information superhighway, we can throw out into the open our screams, our cries for help, so much faster than we could before.

but then the question begs itself: who is there to listen?

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Chicago Poet Janet Kuypers
on all art and all writings on this site completed
before 6/6/04. All rights reserved. No material
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