Messages

I’ve adjusted to life as a free fall. I guess it really is from the start, we shoot out into being with gravity, like a swinging upside down bucket filled with water that holds us down, presses us against the earth hard. But even pressed down we are spinning and spinning with a galactic force that we never see with our own eyes.  

Sometimes, lately often, I want off the grid. I don’t mean I want to live in a forest generating energy through singing bees. I mean I want a landline. Maybe even the old kind, where it’s in two pieces, where you talk into a speaker and hold the ear piece to your ear. It might ring once every two or three days maybe. 

I heard that somewhere in Washington state there is a phone on a tree and you can pick it up and call people who have passed on. Departed. Died. No longer taking calls, except they do in this forest on this phone. You just dial their number, or something close enough. I don’t remember the details so I am filling in some parts of the story. Just imagine a large Doug fir with a slight fir shelf holding a rotary dial landline about 4’ off the ground. You just go up to it and call someone you think about sometimes and miss talking to. 

What would I miss about not having a cell phone? Texts? I have another idea instead. 

I would like little cards with messages delivered by people on bikes and push scooters or on foot. They might be as small as fortune cookie notes. Or they might be 3 x 5 cards with simple messages. For distant deliveries, pigeons could be deployed as well as postal carriers. 

They could say the things that people seem to say a lot when I walk by them on the street talking on their phone. 

I love you.

Where are you?

Ok. 

What? 

They could say:

I see you.

I hear you.

I get you.

You might be in the middle of sweeping your front stoop and someone will come up and hand it to you. Or you might be at your job and it will be left for you at the front desk. 

You will put it in your pocket and get it out and read it over again when you need to. 

Who would you call if you could call anyone from a tree in the forest? 

(Music: chillout music mix 2021)