Daniel Flosi
Correspondence from Home
I admit when word got out that companies were sending
employees home, to work from home, I was pretty jealous.
While most of the world seems to be testing the technology—
stretching the limits of communication.
Because that’s what it comes down to with technology,
levels of communication.
I mean talking with grandparents, with mom and dad,
can be spotty even in the same room, let alone with
technology thrown in the mix.
Lately I’ve seen my bandwidth stretched so thin
at times I can hardly watch a show. Or share photos, or video chat.
Companies are trying to adapt with us and it’s making me
ask what’s necessary: what things are still worth putting on
a platform. My health? my eating habits? quality of my food?
Or is it my technology? My entertainment, my gaming,
my sports, my gazillion monthly subscriptions to apps,
I’m thinking about how much I need
from grocery stores and wondering if I’m not putting all my
eggs in one basket, which I’ve been warned against.
We all have for some time now.
Look outside, look to nature and see all the variety,
it doesn’t take long to realize that
the variety is what is making each and every thing work
nothing is dependent on one source,
everything depending on each and every other thing
yet I am pretty dependent on this one source: the grocery store.
I’m pretty dependent on the few global corporations like Amazon,
or Google for my information, which have made it their aim for
us to depend on their one source, and now what?
I need to be able to depend on myself a little more.
Though I’m not sure if I have the authority to change this.
To be a source of variety, to dig my hands in the earth
and pull up root vegetables, potatoes, and onions and bring
them to the dining table, the family table.
I’m lucky, though, to still have the chance to bring home
the bacon, I suppose. My wife, on the front-line, a grocery-store worker
is also being stretched thin with early mornings and sleepless nights.
Here is an opportunity to appreciate those that we do depend on
regardless of the social hierarchy—They aren’t teachers,
or police, or fire, or doctors,
they aren’t scientists, or academics, or public officials,
or even Iron Man, or Spiderman,
but they are first responders. Our grocery store workers are
first responders.
While the world is testing the limits of communication
with technology, I’m testing the limits of my communication
through poetry, through living a life for my loved ones—
to work for them and spend time with them in a more direct way
while the whole thing comes crumbling down around us.
Dan Flosi’s work has appeared in Vita Brevis and Prometheus Dreaming. A husband and dad, Flosi lives in the greater Seattle metro area. Online at entertainedamerican.com.
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