Sitting at her desk, today the Quill peers into the future and wonders about those who will live one-hundred and ten years from now. She fears a new, and as yet, unseen world where people speak to each other via glowing boxes globally connected through electronic signals.
She wonders: Will this new life be better than life known in her century--where families spend time, dine at festive social occasions, and life is easy because servants provide.
Into the Quill's world is breathed raw, savage instinct, the wild outdoors and the ache for human contact. She worries about future generations and the world of easily eroded interpersonal relationships in a day of instant, trans-world communication.
The Quill wants her 19th-century world preserved in perpetuity, even if only in museums and historical societies, where actors try to recreate the essence of her world but who ultimately fail.
And so, she laments with sadness, the knowledge that her world will soon disappear and that the new world'll have given up its soul, living only on gadgets and a quiet, unstated despair, relayed via chatty wireless toys, all in imitation of real life.
"Tomorrow's children will never reach full maturity, as low expectation and little consequence are taught to them. Self-reliance is not in their working vocabulary and instant gratification will replace the give-and-take of human experience. We shall see callow youths who live in a world of personas, false identities and simulated life, instead of honesty and the healing power of the human soul.
"We are the lucky ones. We are at a new century, poised on the precipice to act. Though we live in the present, we can preserve the future. To act is to save our past, our present and our future. To sit back and relax is to forget our past, let go of our present and deny the future."
And with this last thought, the Quill set down her parchment and, in one stretch, reached for her cellphone and notebook computer and began to type.
"Maybe we can or maybe not. I know I should try but maybe the task is just too enormous. Maybe I'd rather choose something less onerous --something easy and fun like Croquet, or riding in a fast car with my hair loose and free. I'm just too tired to try anymore.
"I don't understand the past, the present is just too complicated and I don't care that much about the future."
Previously published in Pieceworks, 2003.
copyright Kathryn Esplin-Oleski
She wonders: Will this new life be better than life known in her century--where families spend time, dine at festive social occasions, and life is easy because servants provide.
Into the Quill's world is breathed raw, savage instinct, the wild outdoors and the ache for human contact. She worries about future generations and the world of easily eroded interpersonal relationships in a day of instant, trans-world communication.
The Quill wants her 19th-century world preserved in perpetuity, even if only in museums and historical societies, where actors try to recreate the essence of her world but who ultimately fail.
And so, she laments with sadness, the knowledge that her world will soon disappear and that the new world'll have given up its soul, living only on gadgets and a quiet, unstated despair, relayed via chatty wireless toys, all in imitation of real life.
"Tomorrow's children will never reach full maturity, as low expectation and little consequence are taught to them. Self-reliance is not in their working vocabulary and instant gratification will replace the give-and-take of human experience. We shall see callow youths who live in a world of personas, false identities and simulated life, instead of honesty and the healing power of the human soul.
"We are the lucky ones. We are at a new century, poised on the precipice to act. Though we live in the present, we can preserve the future. To act is to save our past, our present and our future. To sit back and relax is to forget our past, let go of our present and deny the future."
And with this last thought, the Quill set down her parchment and, in one stretch, reached for her cellphone and notebook computer and began to type.
"Maybe we can or maybe not. I know I should try but maybe the task is just too enormous. Maybe I'd rather choose something less onerous --something easy and fun like Croquet, or riding in a fast car with my hair loose and free. I'm just too tired to try anymore.
"I don't understand the past, the present is just too complicated and I don't care that much about the future."
Previously published in Pieceworks, 2003.
copyright Kathryn Esplin-Oleski
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Comments: 32
Carol, yep, same one. I think you commented before. Thanks for stopping again.
I lament that it seems that "tomorrow's children" have arrived, with ear buds, or phones clipped to the ear, cell phones, Pod casts, instant messaging, Blackberries, etc. etc. etc.
It seems we are entering the zone where real and non-real loose boundaries, and the need to constantly be in touch, but not to touch, is ever building. Brings to mind the two word challenge some time ago. It is a form of coddled insanity.
Since I plan on being here" one-hundred and ten years from now", I'll email you a first-hand report. Of course, it may take a while my four year old computer runs slow now, I can only imagine how slow it will be by then.
Pulling the same quote as Stuart, I have a different point.
"Tomorrow's children will never reach full maturity, as low expectation and little consequence are taught to them. Self-reliance is not in their working vocabulary and instant gratification will replace the give-and-take of human experience. We shall see callow youths who live in a world of personas, false identities and simulated life, instead of honesty and the healing power of the human soul."
So says The Quill, who also states "life is easy because servants provide."
I wonder if your socially elevated author wouldn't actually find quite a bit in common, considering that life eased by servants and life eased by gadgetry are both lives that have been eased.
Additionally, "live in a world of personas, false identities and simulated life, instead of honesty and the healing power of the human soul." Is a claim many make today both against and for our societies and their rules. Such as the current administration.
Thanks
"Tomorrow's children will never reach full maturity, as low expectation and little consequence are taught to them. Self-reliance is not in their working vocabulary and instant gratification will replace the give-and-take of human experience." - I believe that every generation has said the same about succeeding generations. Teenagers have always constructed language, attire and mores chosen spoecifically because they are different from and odious to their parents.
My apologies. It seems to me that I don't have my mind properly around this piece. Your reference to "Chat rooms, IM and Virtual living" went right past me with nary a breeze to tossle my curly locks. To be honest, I washed my brain this morning, and just can't seem to do a thing with it.
I panic holding the virtual quill in my hand writing about our fast culture so bored now with nature that a lot of folks get anxiety attacks with it after fifteen minutes. We are restless because the land evokes a lost homeland somewhere else in the past, in the memories we conserve as guides to the future.
Technology is disconnecting us from the natural world. I feel this speeded-up fast and furious culture alienating me from the wild land, the vast sea, and the spacious sky. Parking lots are invading the praries, fashion malls are occupying farm lands, and the future is robbing us of the familiar and the mystic chords of memory. The old country is a sacred memory. Yet, our small towns, and forsaken neighborhoods greet us with nostalgia until they are removed by new construction projects. The family livingroom before TV invaded it was sensed as a different space-time. Just turn off all your electronic media and sense time slowing down.
And now our computers connect us like neurons in a world-brain whose synapses are linking and connecting us in a new frontier that welcomes and worries us. This sounds like science fiction. We yearn for the spirit of a sacred space-time in an eternal present, but the moments slip out of control into some globalized hyperspace that is uprooting us all with its economic juggernaut. Early in the morning, I awaken from irrational dreams and sense all these fears without words, but when I hear the birds, the echoes resonate on the hills, wetlands, lawns. And the sky becomes a painting when daybreak is the paint thrown onto the vast canvas of this world.
Yes, nature is speaking to us and seems to weave its way back into our mad metroplex. Perhaps nature gives order to the urban chaos. And the synthetic arteries of highways and veined roads yearn for the life-giving blood of an organic being. Then, at night the beams of bright headlights and glowing tail-lights resemble white and red corpuscles, mimicking the biology of living processes. When will nature's stop signs make us apply the brakes to our fevered and frenzied pace.