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Ode to an Internet

My first encounter with The Internet was at age 17. One school lunch hour, a cool teacher invited my friends and I into the computer lab to “surf” this newfangled thing which, frankly, held little appeal to my bookish teen self — and hardly seemed like it would ever be relevant to my life.

My girlfriend, having moved up from the city, and thus already knowing many things well beyond us, excitedly revealed she had some “websites” we could visit on our first surf.

I don’t distinctly remember what I was expecting at this point, but given my limited experience of Pac-Man on a Commodore 64…it wasn’t much.

Our friend sat down at the computer then and carefully typed in a long string of letters and numbers. On the clunky monitor before us, the macabre photos of deceased Kurt Cobain slowly materialised before us, like a Polaroid image shaken out.

Yes, Dear Reader, that was my first experience of the World Wide Web: images of a musician’s death.

Thank goodness the internet grew up, right along with us.

So here we are in 2020 — and lucky it was us who caught the plague, and not the web now underpinning our entire civilisation, because imagine a virus-afflicted internet in ICU right now…with all of us pressed against the glass sobbing for its life.

(I’m not naming any internet providers, but maybe that scenario isn’t entirely beyond the realm of my lived experience.)

The internet today is enabling me to #stayhome and homeschool four children, between working on books, while my husband ploughs away at his own work —in our pretty fairy lit bedroom, you’re so welcome honey, hope your clients like it— and all the people we love and need and dearly miss, are still only one Zoom call away. Plus, we hardly even look at autopsy photos these days.

Maybe the internet even explains some of my delight in all things vintage and kitsch. Nostalgia feels so good partly because I don’t have to rely on the tools of old…

<insert> poorly disguised excuse to post a photo of my typewriter </end stunning segue>

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The net has a lot to answer for too, and we can definitely send it to its room to think about what it’s done another day, but right now, let’s bask in being the luckiest generation to ever survive a calamity…

The internet tracked my run this morning; regaled me with podcasts while I did my makeup; allowed me to communicate with my amazing literary agent; helped me buy more books online that I definitely need; entertained my children with totally educational shows while I got some writing done; played fabulous music all day; offered me well-balanced ideas for dinner, which I may or may not have accepted; provided plenty of laughter when I just needed to procrastinate for a second; let me press lots of tiny heart icons to express my wordless appreciation; kept me in touch with my isolated mum and dad, love you guys; zoomed me in with my P&C meeting; hooked me up with dopamine influxes; gave me a window into the lives of countless homes the world over because I’m nosy and I like that; stored my photos and words and memories and milestones for yet another day; and, kept my little author blog for me right here, right where I left it.

Thanks, Net.

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Finally, I want to leave you with a beautiful quote for our times, from Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird:

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”

Keep clapping along with the absurdity of life in 2020.

Take care,

xx Averil

Averil KennyComment