Way 2 Age

I have the "if only's" this morning. If only I had the quiet to listen to what's inside instead of rehashing my accomplishments and what I hope to get done today or soon. If only I had the guts to face what I should do today and not tomorrow. Seize the day, as they say. Make the best of every moment. No whining. People want to know about upbeat things.

Even Twitter is upbeat if nothing else. Can you imagine what social networking would look like if people were honest? The downtrodden and depressed and suffering in general are all relegated to the print media. That's where gloom and doom play out the best. The net, on the other hand, is for happy, happy, happy people.

Cellphones work that way. If someone is going to call me to say that his life is miserable and I hear that voice on something that looks like a glitzy energy bar wrapper, it's just not going to come off as serious enough for me to really get into the wallowing. But in the old days, when phones had more gravity, mostly because they were black and heavy and had thick wires, a conversation with someone who was wallowing in misery was much more important and serious.

So from that serious black phone that even had feet, to Twitter on a cellphone between red traffic lights, it's just impossible to get morose or believe anyone that says that they are.

"How's your day going Jon," I ask feeling relaxed because I know I'm stopped in a permanent traffic jam and don't have to worry about driving.

"Well, my reflux is acting up again, Rog," he says. "Now that I've waited for seven years for heirloom tomatoes grown right here in Berkeley, I get hit with my stomach," he says, launching into a fillibuster about how terrible he feels and how hopeless small town politics are. But how can I feel empathy for his pain and wailing while I'm looking around checking out a woman putting on her makeup in a Lexus and a guy be-bopping to the radio in a pickup.

"Oh, I feel your pain, Jon," I say, wondering if inching forward two feet counts as driving while phoning. "Have you tried looking up your condition on the web," I ask. Of course that's just a rhetorical question - about the same as asking how the weather is. Isn't everyone looking up everything on the web all the time anyway?

"Yeah, Rog, I did that. No one knows what I have. You just can't find it on the web because I'm so special."

No. Wait a minute. He didn't say that. He said that no one cares about what he has, and it's not that we are completely lacking compassion. It's because dread diseases aren't what we want to talk about on the interactive web. We want things to be fresh and sparkling and attractive and young and quippy. Acid reflux just doesn't cut it.

I, for one, am happy about that, too. I've got this nasty habit of reading The Wall Street Journal occasionally and that paper is filled with all the gloom and doom of the world. Especially these days, sometimes I have to just put down the paper and not get any more depressed than necessary. I even think that paper intentionally writes alarmist headlines, knowing that I'm a sucker every time for real life horror. The Pit and the Pendulum could be played in that paper as if it was news, not fiction. In fact, that's exactly what Orson Welles' The War of the Worlds broadcast was.

So I look to the papers and occasionally KPFA to get my fill of desperation. I sure don't want to see that on my cellphone, too. Meanwhile, Jon drones on about his misery at missing out on the heirloom tomatoes because of his stomach and the traffic is, as I say, permanently stopped. Hmm. I wonder if it's possible to put Jon on speaker phone and then start pecking out something to someone on the same phone, but what would I say? That Jon is miserable and I should take it seriously? No. That won't do it for the always up, always cheerful web.

I look around again, now that I've got my buttons set on the phone and Jon doesn't really seem to care that I'm not participating in his diatribe. We've been 'talking' on the phone this way for about 30 years anyway. But what to Tweet about?

The woman with the makeup is done. She doesn't see me, has checked her own phone and looks at herself in the rear view mirror. She blots her lipstick and then smears the fresh rouge left on the tissue onto the tops of her breasts as if to give a hint of the bulging heirlooms.

OMG! I'm telling.