"We keep passing unseen through
little moments of other people's lives."
- Robert Pirsig
I've been asked what living nebulously means, at least as it pertains to my or any road trip, and though it makes perfect sense in my mind - a mental monolith constructed one brick at a time over many years - putting the answer into words is not all that easy. The sensuous sense of anonymity implicit in this quote from Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has resonated with me for a long time, and probably comes closest to capturing the spirit of 1/48/50, what I always pictured a cross-country road trip would be like. I'm an avid people-watcher and have always liked the thought of being that fly on the wall. Maybe it's the writer in me. There is a meditative quality to watching life being led, the universe unfolding, from a comfortably removed vantage point. In younger days, whole nights would be spent in a corner booth at a 24-hour restaurant in my hometown, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, listening to conversations, or better yet trying to figure out what was going on by reading faces and body language. Others like me will surely understand that stories are constantly being told without a word spoken. With every move we make, we risk betraying ourselves.
From Dictionary.com: 'NEBULOUS: hazy, vague, indistinct, or confused'
I don't know about confused, but the other three hit the nail on the head squarely. Life on the road, in my mind, engenders a pleasant state of half-existence, watching, observing, listening, while phasing out of the old and into the new, the unknown, the future...
But there are other reasons to live nebulously, external reasons. Most of us feel a need, at least once in a while, to escape this modern world, which at best has a way of distracting us from 'little moments', the stuff happening that actually matters, and at worst can be ugly, invasive and downright depressing. I could fill up a few years worth of weekly posts devoted to specific reasons to seek out a nebulous (read: hazy, indistinct) life.
And why not? Right now, I got nothing but time. I'll shoot for ten good reasons, at least, to disengage from the modern world whenever possible:
Reason #1 to Live Nebulously: Google Glass
One of my many unfinished novels predicted the advent of Google Glass ten years ago. In my futuristic tale, people can permanently link into the Internet by inserting a chip into their brain stem, and have all the splendor and horror of the 'online community' appear as a heads-up display right in front of their eyes. They control navigation - their clicks and downloads and uploads and whatnot - with their eyes or voice commands. Thus, a true collective consciousness is born.
Facebook and Twitter were the first steps toward that collective consciousness (think: the Borg from Star Trek), but Google Glass would seem to be a more precipitous leap toward the dystopia I thought (and think) that collective consciousness could lead to. It is, by my estimation, one giant smack for mankind, right across the puss. As if it weren't already true that too many people have cameras, shoving them into faces and places they shouldn't and sharing the results with a world-wide audience that doesn't need to see any of it but tells itself (or is told) that it does, now they are set to begin wearing them, not just on their person, but as part of their physical presence.
Google Glass is still in the klutzy, awkward and expensive stage, but that's going to change. Wait until the technology gets smaller and cheaper, as all technology does. Wait until competitor knock-offs come out sans a readily apparent recording light, and don't look any different than ordinary glasses, or sunglasses. Wait until a completely discreet prescription option becomes available, and we no longer have any idea whatsoever who is wearing them, and whether our 'little moments' at any given moment are being recorded.
It will never be me. Never. And I will always try to preserve what I believe is a marked difference between the sentiment of the Pirsig quote (as I interpret it) and the function of Google Glass. Yes, I sit and watch people's little moments, occasionally write about them, for all intents and purposes I eavesdrop (publicly, mind you) as a part of a process, but I don't use names, or take pictures, or video, and there is a completely different discipline (operative word being discipline) between what I do, what many writers do, and the witless and uninspired task of wearing Google Glass and recording everything you turn your head toward.
The more I think about it, the more the advent of Google Glass might just drive me into hermitdom eventually. If I had to choose what was worse, Google Glass or 3-D printed guns...it's a tough choice, but I'd have to go with what threatens to lead to the complete disintegration of our privacy.
Yes, a nebulous life on the road beckons...'passing unseen' has become a kind of siren song. I can only hope this trip happens before 'living nebulously' makes that abruptly precarious leap from a preference into a necessity.
