No Substitute for a Barn Raising

My husband-professor Martin gave me my first taste of "Facebook" last night. The sheer amount of information, split-ends of messages, and dribbling trails of self-examination were mind-boggling to me. He had posted a picture of me with a swollen face.
--What's the matter with my face? I asked. It looks as if I've been stung by dozens of bees.

--Oh, you were pregnant then, he said.

But of course it was a picture JUST of my face and shoulders.

lol. What's that? I asked. Laugh out loud, of course. I must be the only one on the PLANET who doesn't know lol.

--And these are the "friends," Martin said, indicating a scroll of names and pictures with the mouse. "They're not friends, actually, in the way of real friends, all of them," he said, and helped me understand a person can have two hundred or two thousand "friends," depending on who decides to let you be their companion, in that way. Not companion, but friend. A different sort of friend.

--Really, I said, in a cynical way. You mean they're not really friends?

* * * * * * *

I grew up in Kenya on a housing compound surrounded by a white gate, dense thorn hedges, and high walls trailing with morning glories. (But this was true for every house and compound in Nairobi). In my compound, I lived in one of perhaps twelve maisonettes, or townhouses, with the members of my immediate family. Across the way lived two Israeli families; down to our right we could smell the then-Zairian (now Congolese) family's fish drying on their lawn; also, there were a few Brits, a couple East Indians, and one handsome, naughty Spaniard. My little brother was in love with the Mexican American girl next door. My mother's Somalian friend came over once and while to drink tea and tell my mother about the idiots at the drygoods store and how she had dismantled their shelves in protest. Her house always smelled of incense and occasionally she wore sheer, expensive outfits and had bellydances with her friends. My sister and I put on a Christmas play in front of the hibiscus bushes with the Nigerian kids.

Always our door was opening and closing; always there were the thuds of bare feet on our wooden floors; always there were shafts of sunlight and tea in the back garden. Our house was constantly bustling with our community in the compound and the endless international guests my mother and father entertained. I learned as a child to sit at the dinner table and absorb the conversations of doctors and film directors and mothers and fathers. Our lives were full, so full that one year there was perhaps only a week when we didn't have company in the house. I loved it and hated it; I was drawn into the fray and frazzled by the fray. There was a small space between the refrigerator and the kitchen wall where I folded myself into when the company got too thick.

Even the driving in Kenya felt relational. It had to be because none of my friends or I had driver's licenses; none of us had e-mail, of course, or our own computers, or any TV schedule to keep up with, though The Cosby Show did come on once and a while. We spent long evenings playing outside, making up plays indoors or laughing, and reading and playing games.

Our compound in Kenya, diverse and exciting, is what many people's online community is now. You can e-mail or chat with a person in India or Uganda or England, and you can do it in your skivvies from the warm upstairs room of Wazoo Farm in PA.

But it's not the same. Something feels amiss.

* * * * * * * * * * *
For about six months, our family did without the internet at home. When I first cancelled our DSL, I had illusions about writing sheaves of letters. I could taste the envelope adhesive on my tongue. I would finally get rid of those stacks of stationary and cards.

Not having internet at home was inconvenient; I take care of the bills and finances and much of that business is taken care of online. But it was also wonderful. Martin, who quickly gets sucked into baseball stats and bottomless wells of trivia and "news," jolly well had to talk to me instead. We read more, played more music, talked face-to-face instead of side-by-side, with the blue shadow of a computer screen flickering on our faces. If we had an urgent question, like WHO was in that movie, we had to wait for the answer.

I fell down on e-mail, and since I hate telephones, and it has been winter forever, I became somewhat of a recluse.

In the silences that no e-mail left, our house echoed. This is our second year here, and the community that seemed to happen so seamlessly in other places we've lived has been slow here. We know one other family well, and they are odd-balls like us. Without their friendship, we should be all at sea, I'm afraid. Part of this is our fault; we've become busy with so many things we can't really name, and Martin stays very busy at work. Compared to most American families we probably have more company than most.

But people seem to keep to themselves, occupied with what Merry likes to sing: TOO MUCH OF NOTHING. I can't help but think that the Internet, and cellphones, and Facebook, has much to do with that. Have we filled ourselves so full of that alternative community that we don't need human flesh anymore?

* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Last night I noticed my eyes were bloodshot.

The night before, Merry came up to bed, Rose book in hand, and said, Mommy, don't do what you did last night. --That is, I had sat at the computer, hammering away, as Merry sat in bed waiting for me to read to her.

Confession. Hear me, for I am hooked. It's been less than a week since we restarted the Internet.

Here's another funny thing. When I'm around TV, I realize that TV is insulting. There are few shows that are worth watching; the news is full of NOTHING; the advertisements are condescending and damaging to my children; the reality TV offers more of NOTHING. But all these things, like junk food, fill you up until you forget that you're hungry anymore.

Too much of nothing can make a man feel ill at ease.
It's all been done before; it's all been written in a book.
When there's too much of nothing. . .

I am outraged by the fact that the media assumes that I am dying to know about celebrities' lives. I don't give a damn about their personal details, or their clothes, or their petty arguments, any more than I should care about Jane Smith over in Iowa who burned her meatloaf last night. I find it utterly depressing that people I love seem to know a whole list of dull details about so-and-so, and even worse, want to talk about them. Knowing more NOTHING makes people feel important.

I found this out when I returned from Kenya straight into college. I stood out the fringes of crowds who batted around pop trivia like a volleyball, back and forth, quickly, happily, smiling at each other and at their own cleverness. Then the pop trivia volleyball whizzed toward me; I stuttered, "I actually haven't ever watched that show--I don't know who she is--" and the volleyball fell through my open, hopeless fingers. I couldn't play social volleyball any more than I can play real volleyball, because I hadn't studied up on the rules.

Confession. In the evening, when darkness is falling and the lamps I switch on do not seem to banish the shadows--in the evening, when I am tired and weary of talking to my children and angry that Martin is late--in the evening, I sometimes long for the noise of the TV. And I don't want a DvD. I want the same TV everyone, everywhere across my town, is watching. I crave the sense of connectedness.

* * * * * * * * * *
But this dichotomy, this separation of body and soul, is not new. In a way, we are the New Platonists. We are nothing more than so many spirits, sending messages through the black expanses of space, listening to voices in our ears that have no warmth.

My house echoes so often, and it cannot be filled by the community of handless images on Facebook. My insides sometimes echo, too, and while an e-mail fills the emptiness for a minute, it does not fill me like a handshake, or a hug, or the comfort of sitting down with my friend face-to-face. The Internet and chatrooms do not call on me to serve, to brew tea, to cook a meal, and so they cannot possibly ever become a substitute for real friendship.

There are no real barn-raisings online. There is no bad breath, no BO, no particular sound of a friend's voice accompanied by their breath, by the warmth of their fingers, by the sounds of their footfalls.

The Amish must be right. Technology distracts us from real community.

Yet here I am, in my pajamas at 11 in the morning, typing away. And I feel, as I so often do, filled with longing for the sounds of diverse voices in my house. I want the rooms filled. I want help with the farm that does not exist yet. I welcome the messes that real people, with real bodies, bring.