Somewhere over the rainbow

It was a new age. Instead of a postcard with the instantly recognizable Golden Gate, perfectly framed, every light and line perfect, this digital photo was taken with a phone. Two young girls stood with their backs to the lens, looking out over toward just the top of that Bridge tower off in the distance. The electronic bits were transmitted instantly over the internet and posted on Facebook, instead of by way of a four by six piece of thin cardboard which generally would arrive by mail carrier after the travelers would have returned to Kansas.

I recognized the bridge. I recognized the girls. The sky in the picture was the color of my sky, but somehow everything seemed so very different. But truly, was anything different?

The instantaneous nature of the photo and transmission are indeed something else. But in the moment, none of the ‘what’ in that photo was actually anywhere close to me where I sat next to my screen looking at my Facebook page. The world that I might be able to touch was merely represented in a wonderful picture of my neighbor girls in a similar way to when my mother took the fifty year-old slide of my father, sister and brother and me, framed with the Pacific Ocean in the background so many years ago. And there’s also a picture in that bunch of slides of that Golden Gate Bridge.

The world is where and when it was. And we are where and when we are. It’s still a time and distance thing.

I can barely remember that my family drove to California in a station wagon. The girls and their parents took a jet plane. Now I don’t mean to minimize technological changes, but what in the world is still essentially the same?

In a way, the sky holds us all together, but in truth, the world hasn’t really gotten all that much smaller. I can walk across the Kaw River Bridge. I can pick up clam shells from the sandbar. The Golden Gate Bridge will always be more than a thousand miles away from me where I am here in Kansas. The girls did bring back some beautiful ocean shells for me to touch. They couldn’t bring me the ocean. Nor could they bring me what it feels like when you look out over the waves traveling in to the shore from the other side of the planet. And then, too, the Kaw has its own particular feel.

This reality remains true about time and distance: Photographs and digital stuff - whether an image or a voice or even video - are indeed all something quite special, but if you want to touch, you still need to be on the same end of the rainbow.

Walking to the river for me is in large part about recognizing the importance of touching stuff and people – of actually being in a place. I was the kid in the middle of the photo shown above. Now I am older than my father was in that picture. And both my parents have now disappeared over the rainbow.  

I like the place I’m in. Lawrence suits me.

Remember to touch.