Thoughts About Facebook

In one of the classes I take, university students admitted to having difficulties completing their papers because of the pull of Facebook. One student admitted to deleting themselves entirely off Facebook as the only solution to keep ‘enough focus’ to write a paper. Many more nodded in agreement.

I do not struggle to stay off Facebook, I struggle to stay on it. But then, I am a fifty-five year old student of life. The students telling me they struggle to stay off Facebook are another wave, generation, workforce, next group of leaders, thinkers, contributors, actors, rehabilitators, reactionaries, respite and/or mighty mess makers of our collective future.

Is this a problem? Probably yes and no, like so many things we have begun to equalize and rationalize as necessary parts of our every day experiences. My friend that came to visit me was quietly texting someone else under the dining room table. My reaction might certainly be different on Facebook instead of ‘in your face’, to be sure, because I grew up when it was a sign of being rude to give your attention to anything other than the person you came to visit. I believe my friend now prefers to greet me virtually and not physically. Come to think of it, I do not hear anything from this friend anymore. I forged a new set of manners by telling my friend to their face what I thought about texting someone else while visiting with another.

I can share that my ‘focus’ and ‘uninterrupted periods of time’ are generally interrupted by things like friends with failing health, birthdays, deaths, children with psychological traumas, over-active children, just plain intelligent children, women, men, dogs, cats, birds, flowering plants, vegetables and fruit trees, all in need of a little attention that distracts me from ‘enough focus’ and punctuates my periods of time, but then, they don’t derail me like Facebook can to the student trying to finish a complex paper, they make me grow, expand, and create a space and time worth being in so I care enough to write the paper in the first place.

Facebook is the new hyper-active kid on the block, and it is time we all decided just how much time we need to spend with this new friend, as opposed to all our old friends like reading, writing and arithmetic, and uh, physical family and friends.

I am talking to a tune of ‘a disappearance’ from our society, that disappearance being the one called ‘solitude’. The capacity to be alone and at peace with one’s self in order to do or think about anything worthwhile, profound and not just responsive, as instant communications and quick information overload creates immediate and un-lasting results. No ‘solitude’, no class paper. No ‘solitude’, no new ideas. No ‘solitude’ no healing, epiphanies, and rejuvenation. Feeling pitted, plastered, knackered, disjointed? Then, you are too plugged in. ‘Turn off’ is the newest form of music for our ears. Seek solitude, and visit Facebook once a week or once a day, but by all means, control it, not it control us and NEVER at the expense of what is right in front of our faces, minus the electronic devices.

‘Solitude’ is a necessary environment which gives birth to ‘enough focus’ through ‘uninterrupted periods of time’ so that any student can write a paper at university level. Toss in the thousands of electronic texts shot toward the rising generation, the blinking boxes on our computers, cell phones and television sets and try to follow the translations of dis-ease caused by connecting with everyone at one time and not with one’s own mind, wherein students of any age stay off the page, otherwise known as not ‘focused enough’, creating the voids we are all beginning to FEEL, but find it hard to explain. Am I making sense? I think I am, but chances are, there is no one out there to respond with, we all just went a ‘twittering’ off somewhere else I suspect, once again.

Write. Write enough to find some new and different ideas to explore, that is why we go to a place to learn, to discuss different ideas, the place we discuss those with ourselves is in the space of silence, or while writing to one’s self, like this. I bet you thought this writing was for you, well, it is mostly for myself, but if it helps you, too, I am happy for that, but when I write, I write to find out what in fact I think about deep enough and strongly enough to WRITE about and push publish.

I care about the pull of Facebook; I care enough to have a sign in my office that says INTERNET ONLY from this time to this time, and after that, none of it!

Do I always adhere? No, but I do try and I am very conscious of the pull of not just Facebook, but anything and everything that will subtract me from myself for too long and thereby turn me into someone who points my finger toward another break in my solitude that then prohibits my showing up for myself at all.

Who amongst us can truly learn anything without deep contemplation, re-collecting all the information that has been blasted at us. We need to take the time to deconstruct, then reconstruct information so that we can achieve some kind of rational goal, like peace, like quiet.

I find that to be the single thing I desire from any experience, peace, and how hard that is when plugged into too many electronic devices that control my input and output in and to the world at large. If I cannot wait to go post the fact that I just made a new batch of cookies, the kind you really eat, and not the kind that attach themselves to me when I am online, then, perhaps it is time to take a decided Facebook holiday, contemplate and think up a new recipe to share, out there, all over the place, all at one time to everyone, this should be important stuff we stop the world in order to share, right?

And, the only reason I have for being on Facebook is that it is the major place I can find someone I know who might respond back to me. I have only one friend left who will write me an email, a letter, and, the rest of the world has simply disappeared into Facebook.

If you can’t beat them you have to join them is my syndrome I tell myself, but then lying in bed at night and the last thing my daughter says to me is ‘do you have your cell phone on you?’ and this happens now, and once, not so very long ago, like a reverse fairy story, it didn’t happen at all, I was not wired for sound but I liked the world better when I held a meaningful conversation with you, and not every day, but only when it was ‘our’ time to be together, now suddenly, we are all sick with one another’s problems at the exact same time through Facebook.

Turn this off now and go THINK about something. Write it down and send it to me, I will read it when 'I decide', which might be once a day, early in the morning and then OFF. After that, there is no room for technology in my life unless there is an earthquake to report on instantly to ease distant minds.

I am committed to being consciously alive, safeguarding my own 'solitude' and finishing this term of papers so I can come back to the wider world, but with boundaries in place, not just on Facebook, but fully present and fully un-present, whatever the case may be, depending on my own need for 'solitude'.

Enough is enough. Facebook needs self monitoring. Just do it! And, I just did.

A Messy Desk

Yesterday, I wrote for two hours and the dogs barked to make me let them in, I did, and when I came back, I accidently deleted everything I had been writing. Damned dogs, I am sick of them being my critics, and master over my every move. Today, I start again.

Sure, dogs can be better companions than some people, but very much like people, they interrupt the flow of trying to do what a writer does. Finding a quiet spot has been difficult for me.

Lately, I have had to write from the dining room table, as the room for my office had to be relinquished a few months back when natural disasters (and welcomed visitors) insisted I share that room with other people. So, I moved into a corner of the dining room. Yesterday, I decided to move my writing space into the garage. I am almost there, but for now, I am sitting here at my dining room table contemplating the books pulled for reference this week and the list is kind of telling:

The Spirit of Trees, by Fred Hageneder, Mother and Child Vibration Heart Exhibition, by Popx as a Creative New Zealand project, The Expressionists by Wolf-Dieter Dube, Van Gogh by Lara Vinca Masini, Art Book Kandinsky by Dorling Kindersley, Essence & Purpose of Yoga by Raphael, Woodstock 3 Days of Peace & Music by Richard Havers & Richard Evans and Conversations with God Book 3 by Neale Donald Walsch.

Looking at this selection I can remember my writing week.

I pulled The Spirit of Trees to reference a poem I wanted to write for a friend. She has a birch tree outside her window that she reflects upon every morning. Fred Hageneder does for “standing people” (Native American expression for trees) what prophets have always done for other people...provide inspiration. My friend cannot go outside to see her tree, nor can she stand, I wanted to bring the tree into her heart even further:

Birch Spells Love (for Diana)

Liberated mind,
connecting with a birch tree,
struck into reverence, grand, grander still...
...three hundred millions worth and counting by Hageneder,
whose friendly science combined with inspiration
intermingles and unites one ecosystem
between a mind and a tree, a birch tree for thee...
...uncaged emotionally, intuiting, rooting
electricity and magnetism, vitality, growth and maintenance
to be on schedule is prudent for perpetuating a species
through the ages and myths preceding the gaze...
of a birch tree, by thee...
responsive to the wind, brightening the dark solitude and heaviness of life
rarely reaching one hundred and twenty, like us, the birch lives
giving way to other trees
coming and going like the wind
leaving bark for boats, canoes, containers, and called
‘the tree of the beginning’, preparing the Earth as well as the soul
in ancient Ireland, the ‘mother of learning’,
presiding over the alphabet:
the first letter b (beth) represents the Birch
as the universal soul described in myth by many names—
Frigga, Demeter, Aphrodite, Venus—
divine mother and goddess of love.

(I can’t say I really wrote this poem, but simply extracted information out of Hageneder’s chapter on birch trees and put it together to convey some of the things I thought my friend might find interesting)

Oddly, the front cover of Mother and Child Vibration Heart Exhibition has a happy nude pregnant woman leaning against a massive tree. There are two of these books sitting on my table because my daughter and I were both in the exhibition that this book is about and she wanted me to write something in her book. I did this week. I simply wrote “You are already the best Mother—I know, Love Mom”. And, she is...she mothers everything and everyone with such a balanced vibration even though she is not physically a mother, internally she is spot on.

The Expressionists arrived in the mix because my daughter was studying these works and commenting on them this week. I stood amazed that she understood the language of Art so innately. However, I shouldn’t have been stunned, she comes from a family rooted in Art for generations...watching her interpret works makes me believe our DNA has a memory, but it does not dictate everything, just enough to show that The Expressionists always belongs in our family mix anyway.

Van Gogh is lying there because he has always been one of my favourite artists and because the book belongs to a friend and I must remember to give it back. This book has been trying to stay in my mix for too long now...I decided to keep it close to me until I could return it. This is the practise of writing something down to make it happen which I seldom see fail for me. Now, the return of Van Gogh is imminent.

The Art Book Kandinsky is a book that I have been reading on for years. I have collected many paintings by a man who calls himself Domingo (for Sunday, the day he was born) and posted a few on my blog. For years I have been trying to complete a book about Domingo’s work. Six years ago I showed a mock up of what my book would be like to a publisher and he said he was interested. I told him I would be back with him in a few weeks, that was SIX YEARS ago. So, what happened? Life, that’s what. I had six other people living with me for a long time, I am in recovery. So, why the Kandinsky book? Domingo says his only inspiration for his own paintings comes from Kandinsky alone, he claims, there are only two artists, Kandinsky and Domingo. How’s that for hubris?

The Essence and Purpose of Yoga is lying there to help me remember to go to Yoga classes each Sunday evening. There are two wonderful yoga instructors giving free (gold coin donation) classes once a week to Christchurch residents because of the earthquake stress. It is, without a doubt, the best thing I do for myself since the events that have unfolded which I am trying not to write about so much anymore, everything about my life at this moment, is defined by the ongoing events and the anticipation of more. After yoga class, I am like Rhet Butler, “And frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” This is a good way to feel in view of the subject matter I am trying not to write about so much.

The Woodstock book was pulled to clarify for myself what I was writing wherein I proclaimed “I was scared shitless” by the earthquakes. The first time I heard this expression uttered publicly was through the Woodstock experience when Crosby, Stills, Nash, and yes, Young were on stage. I could not remember if Neil Young was with Crosby, Stills and Nash at that time, or what. My memory leaks a lot. Anyway, I found the answer, yes, and my article remains factual though unpublished. It is titled: “Tits and Nuts” and uses the famous expression compared with ‘e-mail forwards’ currently going around that threatens you if you do not reply. Perhaps I will post it one day when I become less afraid.

And finally, Conversations with God, Book 3, I pulled because a friend of mine had written to me about a relative that had committed suicide. I vaguely remembered reading the best take on suicide I had ever read inside this book, pulled it off the shelf and found it tabulated just so I could find what I needed. It is an amazing take on suicide and I typed up a few of the pages and sent them to my friend hoping it might alleviate some of her pain. I think it did, it sure helped me. We talk a lot about suicide in New Zealand; it has one of the highest suicide rates for young men compared to anywhere else in the world.

So, this is why my desk is messy at the moment. And, like every morning, I sit here and contemplate what it is that I need to say so much so that I arrive every morning like clockwork to sit and write, read, study and write some more. Painting use to take pride of place, but then, that was back when people bought what I painted. Now, I just paint for pleasure, but writing is akin to breathing. It is something I must do to stay alive.

This week I wrote about our relationship with nature, being a mother, Domingo, being scared shitless and suicide. I guess I can see better now why writing is so important. Even the dogs have not bothered me this morning, only the cat.

Some Things Never Change

Sitting here this morning and reflecting on why I get up and write every morning. I watched my grandmother do the same as I was growing up. Each new day started with a cup of coffee, a fag and a hand written letter to somebody.

I gave up the hand writing a few years ago for the word processor on my computer. It was not an easy thing until I saw how quickly I could ‘delete’ parts of what I had just said. Brilliant, I thought, and stuck with it. Unfortunately, I do not always ‘delete’ parts that infuriate others.

Now, when I have a mind to, I can even publish what I write to go all over the world instantaneously! I wonder what grandma would have made of this. Possibly, she would not be sure, just like I sit...

...wondering how all this will shape the way we communicate to and with one another and when someone will figure out how to put a postage stamp on our newfound freedom to vent...will our silly responses be stored and archived in some futuristic electronic library for the next generations to try and figure out what the heck we meant?

I discovered recently at University that many of the young students could not read long hand...you know, the kind my grandmother did, and I was taught, now, they can only read print. And, most will not bother to read any further than what can be conveyed in a ‘text’ language. I found myself writing poetry in ‘text’ just so I could be read.

Amazing to see how fast things are changing...some days it makes me exhilarated, some days it just makes me tired.

Today, I sit between the two options and wonder, what to do next...in order to be engaged with.

I find that even with the ability to reach out and write to people all over the world at a moment’s notice, I still mainly hold a conversation with myself.

Some things never change.

And, the figuring out what those things are...takes a lifetime...and at the end of it, or shall I say, more than half way through...you discover that there is only one of you out there anyway...

So, I find, I sit here and write to myself, for myself and that is good enough.

Humility

I know, I was going to drop it, but I can’t. It comes with the turf. Starting over doesn’t even sound good after eating a dose of ‘humble pie’ this week, because someone saw my morality board and decided to beat me with it. Thankfully, it was only a mental beating, but it still hurts.


Perhaps it all started when my office was moved to my dining room, a very public space, because my office space was needed as an extra bedroom for company and so, my private space became public, just like publishing something on the internet.

I have always felt that people who have an office to go perform whatever they do out of sight of others were fortunate. Now, I really do, as what I do in my office, means a lot to me, but when put on public view, it doesn’t stack up for much, as it isn’t physical enough for some, and I would have to agree, that reading and writing are very sedentary activities, unless you go jogging on the coastline wearing an ipod wherein you cannot hear spluttering engines and take the risk of being mowed down by a passing airplane running out of fuel. Excuse me for jumping from the physical to the deadly; it’s a knee jerk response after being beaten up mentally.

When people walk in and out of your temporary office and see that blank look on your face and sitting perfectly still, they automatically think it is a good time to break into your world and fill your space with whatever they think. Unfortunately, I have a habit of just looking at them blankly, as I really am somewhere else, grappling with metaphors and analogies, and when they talk to me and I do not talk back, the other parties now privy to walking through my office begin to take offense. I am not listening to them; I am being rude, self absorbed and not a very good person.

O....O....O.

I try to love them through it, I really do. But, when I try to explain that I really didn’t hear one word they just said, so deep into my own world had I been, it gets even trickier. Now, I am justifying my existence. Well...it is humbling to see what people think of what you are doing that means so much to you, but nothing to them because they chose to hold no value for reading and writing. And, I would have to agree, for most of the time, it looks like a very empty occupation, but every once in awhile there comes a sentence, a sentence so ripe and full of all the words you have been dying to hear, granted, they are words from yourself to yourself and certainly that should never be more important than the person standing in your temporary office berating you for not being more cognizant.

‘Darlin’ ain’t ya listening?’

‘No, I isn’t.’

Well, to those who know me well, they understand why I am not listening; I am not listening because I have gone somewhere else for the moment, to return for sure with a whole lot of words about something. But, when my office space suddenly went public, I did not anticipate the ramifications it would present on the psyche of my visitors and myself...it made them feel like I was ignoring them and just not interested in them or anyone else, but myself, and it made me feel rather agitated about being interrupted all the time.

‘You selfish sister!’

‘No, I isn’t’

‘I am writing this for you.’

‘But, I don’t read!’

O...O...O

I hadn’t thought of that.