Samain Thanksgiving Moon
Zoom. I remember balsa wood airplanes and matchbook cars. Both earned zoom, zoom, zoom. Later, listening to the Indy 500 on the radio, as I did for years the zoom, zoom, zoom of the Offenhauser engine that dominated that track, 27 wins, was background to the sportscaster’s calling of the race.
Now Zoom has moved on, gone into the cyberworld. No longer a sound it’s a brand, a type of online video conferencing (videophones! Dick Tracy!) that captures participants in tv-like rectangles filled with one actor, you. It also moves from screen to screen, following the conversation. It has the feel of an IRL gathering with the ability to span distance with ease. It’s a technology I’ve been eager to see for some time. Would loved to have had it when I chaired the North Star Sierra Club’s legislative committee. Statewide participation would have been easy.
While cranking up the Moving Tradition’s curriculum for Beth Evergreen, I zoomed with their staff and other teachers from synagogues across the U.S. When on the Durango trip last summer with Mark, Paul, and Tom, Paul suggested using it to get together when we returned to our respective homes in Maine, Minnesota, and the Front Range. And so we have.
Yesterday Paul, Mark, Tom and I moved into cyberspace. Zoom. Zoom. It was 9 am here in the Rocky Mountain West, 10 in the Midwest, and 11 in the land of the first light. The conversation went deep, over 30 years together makes that easy. We had body language, tone of voice, facial expressions, and shared laughter.
Though. No hugs at the end, no elevation of the trunk as we used to do in our silly, but bonding, post-meeting ritual as Woolly Mammoths. No shared food. Not sure whether profound relationships could be started and nurtured without these, but in the instance of men who’ve known each other long and well, it’s a miracle. (If you were raised, as I was, in the time of the Offenhauser engine.)
“We’re all just walking each other home.” Ram Dass. The ancientrail of human companionship, of friendship now has another path, a virtual one without mountain passes, hostels, gatherings at the Nicollet Island Inn. Zoom. Zoom.