Balloon Note Memories and Mind Worms

©Angie Mason 2010

Days of writing notes and tying them to a ribbon attached to a balloon then letting it go in hopes that someone will answer you, those were magic wonder days. Days when giving out your address in such an unorthodox manner well you didn't think twice. You just set it free floating up into a hope and wish for some kind of connection that never came. This was what it was like before the Internet.

I sometimes miss those days so full of mystery and the unknown there is magic in those times of lost memories now a days with the web everything can be tracked down. Perfect example: Music. Remember how amazing it was to track down music before the web you felt some kind of small victory and really just special for finding it. But now it's so easy everything is a click away. I know it's great to have that access to so much now but having had the experience of both I find nostalgia in that old fashioned search. It was more like a journey a lot of times... spending time with friends tracking things down at record stores or raiding friends record collections to tape your new favorite band because you are too poor to buy the original print. Don't get me started on the magic of mix tapes! Another post another time! The alone time search on the computer just loses some of that connection magic of the past.

So yes the internet is laid out for us and everything feels a click away. Well just about everything I still can't find my first childhood best friend who I will call 'M' since honestly I am not trying too hard anymore because I suppose I like having that memory remain pure in the past untainted by the present. Tree climbing, milk carton drinking, cupcake eating, tooth busting bike riding days are behind me tucked up in my brain with a memory ghost of my past existing pure, free of any mind worms that could eat away at my memories with their present day noodling. You know what it's like having old friends you spent time with when you were young and now have found each other on social networks and get to see that living memory unfold, sometimes it's more than you wanted to know. Those days of balloon note games where there were no worries of such paranoid brain games as giving away too much info it never crossed your mind. Those are lost days now gone, they went the way of that noted up balloon.

Which leads me to think of pen-pals...pen-pals were the social networking of my childhood days. You would write letters share photos get to be friends having not met in real life IRL. Ahhh yet another art form that is slowly fading snail mail.

Now with the ever so convenient email we get our inboxes filled mostly with junk mail or spam not too mention all the mind chatter comment pollution filling up the wires with new comers such as twitter... does that name suggest that it's filled with a bunch of twits ;). Ah I know all the good that comes from the new communication but really it's new and I think we are all still trying to figure out how to balance and navigate life with all this instant connection and constant contact. It just makes me nostalgic for days that felt like the connections I had were more discerning and meaningful because you had to really work to spend time and know each other.

I guess I find many of the new forms of connections kind of impersonal at times with the disconnect that I feel from not having a vocal connection that lost art of chatting on the phone. People think I am a freak that I still have my close circle of friends I talk on the phone on  regular basis. It just feels more intimate. I even read an article about how no one talks on the phone anymore on the NY TIMES. I felt isolated reading that article : http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/fashion/20Cultural.html. Though it's what I have been used to. I suppose when handled in certain ways you can get very in depth with say blogs, sharing photos and instant messaging is interesting as well as video chat.

I am torn I suppose I love new media but also having lived half my life with one old fashion notion of communication and the other half with new forms I just tend to waiver back and forth and tend to get nostalgic. Even email feels like it's fading to me I don't get as many as I used to any more. I suppose with the speeding up of the world everyone is speeding along and only have time to tweet or text a line or two sometimes that just is sad when I think of the old slow pace of life sitting down with pen and paper and meditating on life and the words you want to pen to that some one special you are writing to. It feels more like you have to fight and struggle to have the slow balance these days since everyone is speeding along so fast expecting you to keep up when really you just want to sit at the roots of a tree overlooking a stream and let life whiz past as you pause and go slow motion and let another world open up in front of you it's like you can see the wind if you sit still enough and that is beautiful.

The investment in writing a hand written letter showed a layer of some thoughtfulness no matter how bad the spelling or penmanship. Or really was it just desperation to have contact with another because in the end we are human and that is all it comes down to the need to be heard, to communicate and be understood even if only by one other. But now online the possibility to be heard feels greater having the potential of what seems like almost the entire world there. So by having whatever it is you say out there in the wires to be heard Our modern day noted up balloon of sorts feel like there is even a greater chance now to hear some signs of life in return.

Thinking about it now people are like emails many are spam trying to trick you into thinking they're real when they are not. They are just scammers trying to get something from you ...to get you to open up. You have to go through a ton of spam to find that real email from a real person but when you do its a simple pleasure filled with joy and they are keepers not deleters.

Brushing off the thought crumbs from my mind... Usually these are ramblings of notes I write to myself a lot and i dont bother to share them but this is my balloon I decided to let go simply for fun.

Xoxo Angie

p.s. Here is a balloon poem 

I had wrote some time ago: 

 Balloon bottom blow out
Fly fast to fall
You lost it
You lost it
Never having it all.

Popped
Burst
Exploded
You are rip
Torn apart
Pieces of you
Everywhere
Making a mess of things...
You are good at that.
Way to Go Balloon!

-Angie :p

p.p.s. Never trust a balloon they're fleeting unreliable jerks

who lure you in with the promise of a fun time 

but they always deflate always   
balloons are the A-holes of the toy box world.