Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

I’ve a friend in her forties who probably is the last person on the North American continent to create a Facebook account. In her first post, she joked “So, this is what the afterlife will look like.” I had a similar reaction when scrolling faces of friends I had not seen in two decades.

They emerged as if out of a remembered dream, suddenly smiling back on my computer screen. There, too, for all the world to see, were our shared obsessions and long-forgotten memories: pictures of prom night, posters like Keith Haring’s Free South Africa, that epic impromptu trip to Atlantic City that left us unable even to buy a slice of pizza; our hairstyles and fashion choices, big Marithé + François Girbaud jeans, made ironically trendy again.

For all the complicated impact of social media on society, particularly felt by young people, I find the unprecedented means of documenting human lives quite moving. I’ve connected with long lost buddies from elementary school, and it is amazing to have the long view of each other’s journey on earth, to witness how time has physically changed us.

I had always thought my friendships would last forever, but life subverts the noblest of intentions. So, kudos to all those who have stayed friends without the aide of an algorithm or social media platform.

Some record, albeit imperfect, will always exist of our having lived. Snapshots into our daily lives, of course, will never supplant the memories we leave behind, nor our deeds. But the internet is the new archive, and for the most part, we are our own archivists.

Today’s poem implies that our friends are our bounty. Our essential relationships are born from shared stories over an expanse of time as well as the effort we put into physically being with each other. The rewards are greater and more substantive than any modern technology can provide.

Tea with Ann
by Mary Brancaccio

I don’t know when we started our habit
of long talks over pots of tea

or why it felt so familiar.

And I wonder if we’d been born
elsewhere, would we have met

in a post office line, or waiting

for a bus, instead of
in the cafeteria

at Bishop O’Connell

sophomore year?
I was the one eating alone

when you came along.

But it seems as if
I can’t imagine growing old

without you.

Who else will laugh
at the point of no return

from the priest’s lecture on loss
of virginity, played on a tinny cassette

to a classroom of horny sixteen
year-olds, all bucking to lose it

by graduation? I still can’t pass
that donut shop in Vienna 

without feeling queasy over crème puffs

after you and I got high and you taught me
how crème-filled donuts were made.

And didn’t we talk the dawn in
over mothers and lovers,

the ones we lost, the ones we buried.
Only you understand the gap that grew

between ourselves and our brothers,
after our mothers died.

And the aging fathers we loved,
god, how they wore us down.

I promise this summer, no really,
I’ll help you tame your back lot.

The kids and I will be over.

I’ll bring a rake and pruning shears.
You’ll put on a pot of tea.

“Tea With Ann” by Mary Brancaccio from FIERCE GEOMETRY © 2022, Mary Brancaccio. Used by permission of the poet.