Message in a Bottle

If you find this message, please let my family know I am alive and well. As I write this it is day #5 without an internet connection thanks to an electrical storm and resulting fried circuits. A parade of technicians has come on a mission of repair, each failing and passing the project on to the next in line. With each passing, futile day my despair increases.

Gather around, children, and I will tell you about communication in the olden days. You had a cylindrical object, a tube with a point at one end and filled with dark liquid. You held this in your hand with the point on a sheet of paper and moved your hand around to make marks on it. You then folded the paper, put it in an envelope with an address consisting of the recipient’s name, house number and street, and city on it and put it in a box. A person came and collected it along with all the other envelopes and took them to a depot where they were sorted and placed in some sort of conveyance – truck, boat and/or plane – that transported them to the depot in the destination city. Another person then took the envelope to the house of the person marked on it. It was a cumbersome process that took days.

It’s hard to believe that people actually communicated that way. It required no electricity, no connectivity and pretty much no smiley faces. Just lots of manual labor. And since the process was so laborious, you tended to write about the big stuff, no two-line updates about the dog playing Frisbee on the lawn. Difficult to imagine in a Twittering world.

I’m struggling hard to cope with my new-found isolation, disconnected from family, friends and weather reports. As I gulp the last few swallows of wine to empty the bottle that will carry this message, I think back to the days when penmanship had meaning. It’s nothing I want to return to. I like letting my fingers do the talking. But for the moment, my existence feels pre-industrial. I guess that means it’s time to hike to the sea and get this puppy on its way.