TechnoSimplicity

As I write this, I'm 12 km above the Pacific Ocean, in a metal bird winging its way along at azimuth 245 at 900 km/hr.  All my luggage is in a backpack with the word "Senate" pasted on it.  Everything I've scribbled since 1990 is on the hard drive of the laptop I'm poking at.  That data is also on ZIP disks in a cabinet at my hideaway in Kona (today's destination).  Another backup is in safe deposit at a bank.  There are a few critical files in an offsite facility to, and from, which I FTP my work during trips.

So, you think, here is one more geek with his laptop and his data backups.   One more techie who thinks he has inherited the earth.  One more person with all sorts of complicated technological ... for lack of a better word ... "stuff" going on.   Probably a lot of toys at home.   Right?

Wrong.

Other than what I just mentioned, I own a bicycle, a printer, and enough clothes to half fill a small washing machine.   That's it.  Not much.  But the quality is the best I could find.  How un-American:  quality over quantity.  But it's not that simple.  I own time.  It is God's gift to me.  I think of it as a cosmic blackboard on which I am free to scrawl.

The less "stuff" I claim dominion over, the closer I become to owning everything I see ... the whole world ... all the years allotted to me ... even, perhaps, other worlds and eras immeasurably remote in space and time.  While I am swimming in open water, be it the Atlantic or the Pacific or that lake in northwestern Wisconsin whose name I can't remember how to spell, there are fish who come by and say this to me.  I believe them.

Copyright 1998, 1999, 2000 by Francisco Carrera.