As a highly imaginative child of eight
or nine, I remember laboriously drawing a detailed treasure map, with a proper
seagull-quilled ink pen of course (which I presumed all decent pirates used
during their time), and then scorching the edges of the document with a match,
creasing it with muddied fingers, and doing whatever I could think of to make
it appear ancient, and hopefully, authentic. Then, I corked the message into an
exotic looking bottle, rode my bike madly down to the furthest outboard railing
of the government wharf at the foot of the hillside where I lived, and enthusiastically
tossed the flagon into the water. Luckily for me, the tide was on its way out.
It gently accepted the small vessel, and willingly let it bob off into the silent
deep.
Later that night, as I lay in bed
visualizing the adventurous journey the fragile craft would no doubt take,
possibly circumnavigating the globe and ending up beached on some distant
atoll, my recent cub scout training kicked well into overdrive and I felt
serious remorse that I had used the opportunity to promote a fraud, rather than
convey any purposeful communication. Consequently, even now in potentially more
cunning years, I earnestly make endeavors to be as legitimate with my musings
as bucolic humor will permit, and to keep them void of any personal agenda.
The problem is, of course, that
the very fact that anything is being written for public view indicates some
sort of plan of the author, whether recognized or not. Because it is also noteworthy
that not only are the recipients of the item (if any) total strangers… they
also may not even exist until many, many years, decades, or eons into the
future.
When all of this gets translated
into current day social media venues, considering the amazing variables of
Internet form and the vast amount of literary content, the odds of anyone beyond friends and
relatives reading any of these postings skyrockets into oblivion. Like that
fragile bottled message of yesteryear, their chances of survival and ultimate
retrieval and examination by anyone, present or future, is at the very best…
unlikely!
And so why do people like me and
others I know and read even bother to write.
It may be due to a leak in the
gene pool, too much or too little oxygen in the atmosphere, or simply fungus
between the toes, but most humans seem to have a fundamental need to
communicate with others of their species. There is a primordial void in their
psyche and so they have carved on cave walls, sent signals airborne, etched
metal plates, and tossed bottled dispatches into the seas throughout the ages
in the dimmest hopes of conveying their message to others.
And the message is…???
Well… as
Marshall McCluhan categorized it… “THE MEDIUM” of course!
And that dear reader may easily be
the cosmic, overall message being conveyed.
However… if one is able to clear
away the chaff from the wheat and be as non-ego involved as possible, the
notable attempts could be viewed much more clearly as merely a solitary hand
reaching out of the mist in hope of connecting with a kindred spirit. A
Celestial mind-meld of ethereal proportions across time and space, which from
our reality standpoint may mean nothing, but as an act of symbiosis, almost
everything.
Happy texting everyone. - J
Article Copyright J. Michael Lyffe - 2014
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