Then, I thought I’d touch on how people are communicating with each other by typing into plastic boxes that send their words around the world. But you know that and who am I to list, define and expound on that? I’ve been on-line a relatively short time and have just developed a web-presence with this site (I hope).
That wasn’t going to fly so I was left with the third aspect of my proposed essay and that begins with the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem “The Arrow and the Song”:
I shot an arrow into the
air,
It fell to earth, I knew not
where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the
sight
Could not follow it in its
flight.
I breathed a song into the
air,
It fell to earth, I knew not
where;
For who has sight so keen
and strong
That it can follow flight of
song?
Long, long afterward, in an
oak
I found the arrow, still
unbroken;
And the song, from beginning
to end,
I found again in the heart
of a friend.
The poem was supposed to tie together all the elements of the essay: cell phone, Internet, and back in the 19th Century, Longfellow’s arrow and song. All are attempts to connect with someone else, I thought, but then realized that Longfellow’s poem was more about the desire or need to connect and less about the mode of connecting.
He shot off that arrow and breathed that song with the blind hope or faith that it would land somewhere. He knew not where it would land and he knew not when he would know where it landed and to what effect. Yet, the poem suggests that he had to do it anyway and that the need to connect with “a friend” is one of the things that make us human. That leads me to the proper subject of this essay, which is why over the years I have persisted in keeping a journal and writing the occasional poem or short story, and why I’m taking this opportunity to post my work on the Internet.
Many, many years ago I decided I wanted to be a writer, because I liked books. Later, after I studied English and world literature and taken a number of writing classes, I developed some skill at writing and learned to enjoy ordering words about to create an effect. My ambition to be published, however, was chilled by my perception of the competition and doubts about my own ability.
Still, I had this skill and my own experiences so I kept a journal off and on over the last 20 years and tried to shape some of them into stories and poems. But the unrequited need to make a connection nagged at me, especially as I got older. Who, I thought, will I leave this writing to? And what does it matter that I have written things and continue to write things? What is the significance of it all?
Making a connection began to grow more in importance
than the method of communication.
Whether cell phone, writing, Internet, or arrow and song, the need to
connect is inherent in them all. So now
I can take advantage of Internet technology to shoot my arrows and breathe my
songs in the hopes that they will land somewhere, perhaps in the heart of a
friend.
Ernest Cardenas, August 1999