Isn’t There Any Mystery Left to Being Apart? The Obsession to Keeping in Touch With Those Out of Sight
There are many times when I wish I were a cartoonist. I can think of all sorts of satire, political and otherwise, that would surely hit the mark with a well-executed cartoon. As it is, I’m incapable of transferring “think” to “ink” because I can’t draw worth a damn. In fact, my skills are so lacking I’m generally the last one chosen as a partner in the board game “Pictionary.” I tried to draw a girl in a bathing suit once, and she came out looking like the Michelin man. Fellow players hilariously tacked that effort to the refrigerator door.
This deficiency, however, has not prevented me from thinking about what I might draw as a cartoonist, any more than lack of money inhibits a poor person from imagining herself in a mansion. The basic problem with all credible cartoon ideas, however, is that they are, in modern parlance, “time sensitive.” You have to jump on an opportunity and translate it instantly into a printed image ready for mass distribution. References, like people, can grow obsolete in no time flat.
With all the newsworthy subjects in today’s world, it shouldn’t be hard to land a pictorial bulls-eye. One of my favorites presently is our slavish addiction to all things electronic. Several times a week I walk a short distance from my apartment to the large senior center in the middle of an urban area. Along the way I make a game of counting the number of people who are talking or listening on their cellphones, wholly oblivious of me or anyone else around them. If they didn’t have those little blinking red and white signals at street corners, these absorbed, far-away folks might end up being traffic statistics, along with the equally-addicted,oblivious types who insist on using hand-held cell phones while driving.
In five blocks, I generally count at least a dozen texters or talkers. Some have earphones, others not. I observe them, but they do not return the favor. When I step into an elevator in my trendy apartment complex, most of the tenants younger than myself do not appear to notice me, much less greet me. They remain glued to their precious little phones, fondling them, staring into their depths as into the eyes of a lover.
Last Christmas, I went to a family gathering where there were young people who really weren’t there. Two of them sat opposite me on a sofa, eyes lowered, busily texting or chatting with their absent buddies. When I traveled on a train down the coast recently, the young woman sitting next to me called her boyfriend every five minutes or so, to inform him exactly where on the journey she was. Isn’t there any mystery left to being apart?
I don’t suppose these “electrono-holics” considered the possibility of meeting new relatives at the holiday season, greeting new neighbors in a lift, or peering out of a train window to observe the here and now. They seem rather disinterested in living in the present. It’s the absent that absorbs them more.
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