Spitting Out the Window

The nice thing about the Internet is that nobody spits on it while you browse it. Unless, of course, that’s your particular fetish. Then—for a small fee payable through your PayPal account—you can go to spitonmewhileiread.com, and a 19-year old Ukrainian woman in bondage gear will come to your house and spit on you, as requested.

But back to the Internet. Emily Dickinson was known to pause from her work to spit out the window at passersby. Then, the mad little genius (released from her fetish) would get back to scribbling her “letter to the world.” Her blog, if you will. Because blogging is this millennium’s Dear Diary. Our way to connect in our plugged in lives, where we Peapod our groceries and Zappos our shoes and fall in love on Match.com, from offices that consist of a Blackberry and a WiFi connection at Starbucks.

At first, I was revolted by the idea of blogging. Why is everybody so desperate for attention? Why does everyone assume what they have to say is worth hearing? Or that anybody cares enough to listen? But that’s just it. We want somebody to care. For our thoughts to have meaning, to resonate with others. To prove that we matter.

My husband is making me a web site (another project, another day with A.D.D.), and after many failed attempts to convey to him what I wanted—creative, personal, handmade, whimsical, not “store-ish”—I finally told him I wanted it to validate me as a human being. And the sad thing is, I meant it. My car doesn’t represent me, unless: “This is what I could afford and what was on the lot in red the day we wanted a car,” says it all. My clothes are pretty much: “This is what was on sale at Old Navy last time I had a fat day and 20 minutes in which to buy something that fit.” My house says me, inside at least, where there’s a lot of color and clutter and cat hair. Outside it says, “Nine other families are sharing this building to make it affordable for all of us to live in this town.”

So, does what people publish on the Internet validate them as human beings? Unfortunately, a lot of what is revealed is less like poetry and more like a glob of spit. People can be really scary to each other when they’re protected by the cape of invisibility. It’s worse than how we treat each other in our cars, shouting insults and flipping fingers. We do it because we can get away with it. While on Craigslist last week, placing a classified ad, I decided to peek into the writing forums. Ninety percent of the content was somebody flaming somebody else for the crime of simply replying to a post they must have wanted a reply to in the first place. It’s like every word written was an invitation for abuse. Sensitive soul that I am, it really bummed me out, because I read into it all sorts of ideas about the nature of human beings, whether we’re basically good or bad, whether society is in decline, blah blah blah.

If Emily Dickinson were alive today, would she blog? Would her letter to the world go heard or unheard, according to the whim of cyberspace? Would she be flamed for being different, or would agents and editors flock to her, eager to offer her a book deal and a movie option? Maybe she’d meet somebody on Match.com, get married, have babies, get fat, become a Jenny Craig spokesperson, and end up on reality TV. Maybe it’s better the Internet waited to get invented. I don’t know. All I know is that I’ve become one of the gigabytes of people taking off the cape of invisibility.

This is my letter to the world. Is anybody listening?