Phoebe is gone.
Up and flew away, like a gaggle of balloons on a windy day. Never to be seen again.
One day she was here. The next day she wasn’t. And I feel abandoned.
I do. Really.
I guess you could say I attach easily. Some say that’s a beautiful quality.
Others say not so. They say learn to detach. Protect yourself.
I don’t care either way. I just know that one day Phoebe was resting comfortably in my rain gutter. And now, she’s gone.
And since I really did like seeing her there, that just bums me.
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Now, onto tweeting.
Not the birdy kind, but the kind I saw at a conference on social media I attended last week in New York City. Before I make my point, try to picture this:
1. A packed auditorium.
2. A new speaker every 20 minutes for four hours, rotating like a set of confused teacups, delivering information like dominos falling, slow and steady at first, and then frantic and rushed at the end (so sorry, just got the signal, short on time, try to keep up, so sorry, just got, short on, try to, so, just, short, try, so, you get it, yes?).
3. A room full of flashing Crackberries, the tap tap tapping of fingers on keyboards, and a swarm of vibrating cell phones.
4. And on the left side of the stage, beside the presenter spinning like an out-of-control penny, a long tall Jolly-Green-Giant sized screen, magnified like a teleprompter on steroids for easy reading, with a running stream of tweets from, you guessed it, attendees.
That’s right folks, people actually there, at the conference, in the audience. Paring down each expert’s words to a mere 140 characters. In real time. For those who couldn’t attend the conference—and for those who could.
Like me.
After all, who could focus on the actual life-sized peoples with all that technology happening? Certainly helped to have their every word and thought recapped by the very instant.
Sure did.
Wait, here comes a proverb. Too much technology makes thoughtful little Jewish girl with pizza addiction run in crazy circles like old dog chasing chubby tail. (Yes, I did get this in a fortune cookie once. Seriously.)
An overblown obsession with anything can do that to a person, though. Don’t you think?
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In my defense, it would have taken a mime’s focus to compete and win against all the distractions on that day. Without them, each presenter might have had a fighting chance at keeping us solely and wholly centered on what they were saying.
And we might not have needed a rolling scroll of tweets to remind us of what was going on right in front of our faces. And, we might have actually learned something more than we actually did and connected more deeply in the process.
If I(we) weren’t so distracted, that is.
(Wait, did I just say that? I’m sorry, did you say something? What’s that? Did anybody else hear that? Hello?)
At least that’s what I think.
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Of course, it didn’t help that, on the 2.5 hour bus ride home, the guy next to me kept a Bluetooth device in his ear. Take it out already, I wanted to shout. We are humans.
Then, as the hours passed, I wondered if it was stuck in there. Tilt your head, I wanted to say, I’ll help you. After all, I had some tweezers in my backpack. I was prepared to do whatever it took to wrench that puppy out of his inner canal, almost eager to restore him to normal. Get back to the basics, if you will.
Because after too many hours of blogging, tweeting, and linking in, I was technologied out–wanting the simplicity and beauty of things that did not require an ear device or, for that matter, a Wifi connection, a power cord, and a limited number of characters.
Which is why, perhaps, from time to time, I long to see a once-pregnant bird resting gently and quietly atop my rainspout. Using a simple flicker of the eye to tell me something important.