Tight Quarters, Space Hoarders

Oh hey, here I am on an airplane, squashed between two people. That's the part of flying I don't love. It's amazing though, that man has invented these roaring beasts in the sky. Leonardo da Vinci wanted desperately to feel the total exhilaration of really flying, and if any man was smart enough to do it, it should have been him. It's strange, that these innovations, these life-changing inventions and changes in the whole make-up of our world become part of our lives. They're so amazing at first, and we sort of admire them in awe. And then they just become a part of life. Take the internet, say seeventeen years ago.

I remember my friend Meredith, who was up on computer things, unlike me, who still thought computers were mostly for people nerdier than myself (not sure who I was kidding here, I read books at recess for years, so . . . ). She was probably the first person who I heard use the word "internet" and it was some thing that she did with her brother at night in their basement, and I didn't really understand anything about how it worked, but the first few items I worked out from magazine articles were all scary: people you didn't know could communicate with you and possibly find out secrets about you and then do "bad things" to you, like stealing your identity or stalking you or something. Right off the bat, the fear of the unknown was greater than the curiousity.

But then, sometime in college, people started getting something called email, which seemed like a fairly safe (and woohoo! Inexpensive!) way to communicate, even with people really far away. Huh. I tried it out. At least a couple of times a month. And then newspapers started posting content online. The formatting was pretty drab at first, but hey, free newspaper, right? There were all the quarrels about charging to access content or not. I didn't pay much attention, but my little internet engagements would sometimes occur as often as once a week. To check for emails from the three friends who I emailed with. Eventually the term "surfing the internet" became common enough that it didn't seem like some crazy thing that single men living in their parents' basement did to escape from his own sad state. I even tried it. And learned some stuff. And wasted a little time of my own. This, obviously, was before I realized how gloriously much time I actually had available for wasting, as I had not yet experienced the joys of little people clamoring for attention, haha! Oh little children, I love you.

The first time the internet became not just a time-sucking diversion, but a glorious asset, almost, but not quite yet, a need, was probably when Aaron and I moved to Connecticut. Those first emails out to friends and family to tell of our adventures were amazing. Well, the emails weren't amazing so much as the fact that I could without stamps or long-distance phone calls tell people about our little adventures. I wish I could figure out how to retrieve those ca. 2000 emails that I sent. Back then I deleted from my archives religiously so that my inbox wouldn't get too full. Oh Brittani.

And now, in a way we could never have imagined those seventeen years ago, the internet is necessary. As Aaron so often says, "if it isn't on the internet, it doesn't exist," and those words are pretty hard to refute. We no longer marvel that our words and images can be transmitted across the world, from here in Italy to wherever you are reading (or not reading)this in seconds. It just is. And flying in an airplane large enough for 350 over mountains and oceans is not only no longer amazing! thrilling! a marvelous victory of man over nature! It's slow. It's uncomfortable. Noisy. And squishy.

But today, today at the least, I'm going to remember that man has not always been able to fly. That my ancestors traveled to America in the belly of a boat where the floor was slick with vomit and other bodily fluids. That to travel often meant to die, and that to fly . . . well even to imagine such a thing was a work of genius. My hat is off (haha, I never wear hats) to the scientists and physicists who figured out how to lift man off the ground for seconds, then for minutes, and finally for hours. Who took those first strange-looking, windy, cold puttery machines and sculpted and molded them into large, temperate vehicles that could transport me to so many different places on the globe, to give me a taste of Italy, a glimpse of Scandinavia, an experience in Israel and in Egypt. " To stand on the shoulders of giants," as someone (who I can't name at the moment because hey, we haven't quite crossed that final frontier of internet on the planes yet, but who was likely either Einstein or Newton—I lean toward Newton but will avail myself of Google's most obliging aid upon my next encounter with free wi-fi) once said, is to experience a world that is full of wonderful things which I had no part in creating. It makes me feel a little guilty actually. What am I contributing in return? Not enough, I'm afraid. Perhaps I need to hoist myself up more often. But also, to enjoy the view from the shoulders, this week especially.

Oh Michelangelo. Giotto, Donatello, Cimabue, Gabrieli, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli. Leonardo. I aspire to your shoulders.