Emily Dickinson didn’t need a government to quarantine her during a pandemic. She self-quarantined in her house in Amherst, Massachusetts. She doesn’t appear to have seen much of Earth’s geography, spending a little time at nearby Mt. Holyoke’s school for women, but never graduating. She was articulate regardless of the level of her education, so much so that she influenced American poets and still stands as an icon of creativity. From one of her poems we can deduce that she was a reader and that through her books she traveled beyond the confines of Amherst. One of her poems begins with a now rather famous line, “There is no Frigate like a Book.”
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human Soul –
Emily, God bless her, was only partially right. If she were alive now, she would have another frigate to sail, one called YouTube, the ship of both scholars and fools, a ship on which even the poor can book passage. YouTube, for whatever its varied content reveals about the inadequacies and the hopes of our species, does present the world “Without oppress of Toll,” that is, if one ignores the cost of computer, smartphone, or tablet, and the price one’s Internet provider charges—Oh! And let’s not forget the wireless router. What was I saying?
I took a trip to Karahan Tepe today. Boarded the YouTube frigate and sailed not only to a distant land but also to a distant time. In doing so, I wondered whether Emily would have quarantined herself even more, not even wandering into her garden because she was fascinated with “Lands away” that she could reach on, excuse her mixed metaphor, a “frugal” “Chariot/That bears the Human Soul,” that is, if Emily owned a computer. YouTube could transport her to an archaeological dig at a site deemed even older than Göbekli Tepe. Space and Time: Neither are for us what they were for her.
Karahan Tepe is in the early stages of excavation. I don’t know what the archaeologists might uncover. That they have to “uncover” it is in itself a bewildering fact. Why, like the people who constructed Göbekli Tepe, did the builders bury Karahan Tepe? I can understand building on top of older material for new construction. Heck, the Marina District in San Francisco is built largely on the debris of buildings broken by the 1906 earthquake. And there are Roman buildings on top older Roman buildings and similar build-overs in Jerusalem and other ancient cities. The most famous of buried settlements is the multilayered city Troy, its original Bronze Age structures buried under successively younger buildings. But Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe seem to have been purposefully buried without the intention to build anew. Why cover over what took a long time to build? Wouldn’t Emily be fascinated by the puzzle as I am puzzled? Wouldn’t she want to travel on the ship of YouTube to that site? Were she alive today, would she write something like this after learning about those ancient faraway sites?
There is no Mystery like an Ancient One
That takes us back to times quite old
When we have only what we’re told
By diggers guessing why what was done,
That took years to build beneath the Sun,
Was covered over and quite undone.
It is YouTube that recently took me to an even more distant place, the surface of Mars, where I not only traversed the red soil but also flew over it—all this from my desk chair. Emily, if you could see what I have seen! Emily! I’ve walked the surface of Mars and visited distant Pluto!
Vicarious travel has allowed us to see the world we could never visit. We could say such travel began with written language, with Emily’s book-frigates, but story-telling antedates writing. I’m wondering now whether or not the people who built those faraway and long-ago places at Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe told stories while they chipped away at the rocks and carved animal figures. I’m wondering whether their carvings were their frigates to lands untraveled, lands described by visitors with stories of cultures never met. Apparently, they, like so many other people that built without the aid of wheels, had limited geographic experiences. Travel was made easy by the wheel, but it was never easy or easily accessible until there were book-frigates, or should I say, runes on clay tablets and papyrus scrolls laden with a cargo of tales in hieroglyphs and ancient scripts. Maybe in trade encounters, the ancient people exchanged stories with other nomadic people—neither Göbekli Tepe nor the older Karahan Tepe might have been places of permanent residence though that might be debatable. I’m not an archaeologist, and I have visited both those ancient places only by booking passage on the YouTube frigate and through accounts in archaeological and popular journals.
So, yes, I’m like Emily. Sure, I’ve traveled some, much more, in fact, than Emily ever did, but not as much as others. We all have our geographic limitations that time and money impose. Even those who walked on the moon never went to all earthly locales. And although I’ve seen some foreign lands, I have not traveled to all other places by, excuse the mixed metaphor as Emily writes, riding a “Chariot” pulled by “Coursers” that are “pages” of “prancing Poetry.”
Space and Time. I’ve traveled through both, reaching vicariously as far as Mars and farther back in time than either Göbekli Tepe or the arguably older Karahan Tepe. I’ve visited an older settlement, one called Meadowcroft, located in Avella, Pennsylvania, not far from where I live, the rock shelter with evidence of habitation going back 16,000 years. And in traveling backward through time as a professor teaching paleontology, I’ve dug for and found fossils that predate both those Mideast structures and Meadowcroft by not just thousands, but by millions of years. I’ve seen and walked on rocks that predate all humanity by billions of years, also. You, though you might never have studied paleontology or geology, have also traveled over ancient geography, and assuredly, like Emily, live in an area once radically different from today’s appearance, the poetess, too, having lived near the igneous mass of Mount Holyoke that stands above the more recently cut Connecticut River valley. Geology was a child when Emily lived in sight of that massive mound of ancient rock; otherwise, she might have written about traveling through time as well as through space. She lived where Native Americans had once built their shelters, also. She lived where once no humans traversed the land. An ancient world lay beneath her feet, beneath her home and garden, and if she had climbed Mount Holyoke, she could have looked down on her home built a distant 200 million years after the mountain had turned from magma to solid rock.
Emily, as I said, might have no incentive to leave her self-imposed quarantine were she alive today. I imagine her now as she lived then, a recluse traveling by book and today by YouTube as well, her life a virtual one; her experiences, vicarious ones. During a pandemic, many have become incarnations of Emily, missing in the process the actual feel of an outside world, relegating themselves to views chosen by the camera holder or videographer.
If you decide to take a trip to Göbekli Tepe or Karahan Tepe via YouTube or through a professional or popular journal article, recognize that the perspective you get of both time and space is someone else’s perspective. A view captured by a lens or in an article might miss what you could see in person. As much as a YouTube voyage enthralls, it also deprives because it really doesn’t substitute for being there. But, alas, we’ve become virtual travelers nowadays, and even before imposed quarantining shut down the travel industry, we relied on virtual reality for much of our travel.
We are endowed with neither omnipresence nor eternal life. We don’t have, as Andrew Marvell phrases it in “To His Coy Mistress,” “world enough and time.” So, we cheat both Time and Space through vicarious experience. We travel by book and YouTube. We sit to go. And we visit by those frigates more places than Emily could even have imagined. Emily! I’m telling you, I’ve been to Mars and flown over its surface on a machine that wasn’t even invented in your time. And Emily, I have traveled farther back in time than you knew time extended. I’ve seen images of the universe just after its birth 13.8 billion years ago. No, I haven’t stood on a distant world, but I have, nevertheless vicariously visited more than one of them. And I have held in my hand the remains of life-forms hundreds of millions of years old, allowing me to transcend the limitations of my finiteness and to reverse the flight of Time’s arrow. Come to think of it, I have conquered not only Space, but also Time. I have traveled both by traveling and by staying put. I might not be omnipresent throughout the universe, but I have been on frigates that sailed both seas and skies. Without getting wet, I have gone into the deepest parts of the ocean. Without getting cold, I have climbed Mt. Everest or wended my way across an Antarctic glacier.
I’ve experienced on both real and virtual frigates more world and time than the poetess could have imagined. And I'm guessing that you have, too.
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human Soul –
Emily, God bless her, was only partially right. If she were alive now, she would have another frigate to sail, one called YouTube, the ship of both scholars and fools, a ship on which even the poor can book passage. YouTube, for whatever its varied content reveals about the inadequacies and the hopes of our species, does present the world “Without oppress of Toll,” that is, if one ignores the cost of computer, smartphone, or tablet, and the price one’s Internet provider charges—Oh! And let’s not forget the wireless router. What was I saying?
I took a trip to Karahan Tepe today. Boarded the YouTube frigate and sailed not only to a distant land but also to a distant time. In doing so, I wondered whether Emily would have quarantined herself even more, not even wandering into her garden because she was fascinated with “Lands away” that she could reach on, excuse her mixed metaphor, a “frugal” “Chariot/That bears the Human Soul,” that is, if Emily owned a computer. YouTube could transport her to an archaeological dig at a site deemed even older than Göbekli Tepe. Space and Time: Neither are for us what they were for her.
Karahan Tepe is in the early stages of excavation. I don’t know what the archaeologists might uncover. That they have to “uncover” it is in itself a bewildering fact. Why, like the people who constructed Göbekli Tepe, did the builders bury Karahan Tepe? I can understand building on top of older material for new construction. Heck, the Marina District in San Francisco is built largely on the debris of buildings broken by the 1906 earthquake. And there are Roman buildings on top older Roman buildings and similar build-overs in Jerusalem and other ancient cities. The most famous of buried settlements is the multilayered city Troy, its original Bronze Age structures buried under successively younger buildings. But Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe seem to have been purposefully buried without the intention to build anew. Why cover over what took a long time to build? Wouldn’t Emily be fascinated by the puzzle as I am puzzled? Wouldn’t she want to travel on the ship of YouTube to that site? Were she alive today, would she write something like this after learning about those ancient faraway sites?
There is no Mystery like an Ancient One
That takes us back to times quite old
When we have only what we’re told
By diggers guessing why what was done,
That took years to build beneath the Sun,
Was covered over and quite undone.
It is YouTube that recently took me to an even more distant place, the surface of Mars, where I not only traversed the red soil but also flew over it—all this from my desk chair. Emily, if you could see what I have seen! Emily! I’ve walked the surface of Mars and visited distant Pluto!
Vicarious travel has allowed us to see the world we could never visit. We could say such travel began with written language, with Emily’s book-frigates, but story-telling antedates writing. I’m wondering now whether or not the people who built those faraway and long-ago places at Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe told stories while they chipped away at the rocks and carved animal figures. I’m wondering whether their carvings were their frigates to lands untraveled, lands described by visitors with stories of cultures never met. Apparently, they, like so many other people that built without the aid of wheels, had limited geographic experiences. Travel was made easy by the wheel, but it was never easy or easily accessible until there were book-frigates, or should I say, runes on clay tablets and papyrus scrolls laden with a cargo of tales in hieroglyphs and ancient scripts. Maybe in trade encounters, the ancient people exchanged stories with other nomadic people—neither Göbekli Tepe nor the older Karahan Tepe might have been places of permanent residence though that might be debatable. I’m not an archaeologist, and I have visited both those ancient places only by booking passage on the YouTube frigate and through accounts in archaeological and popular journals.
So, yes, I’m like Emily. Sure, I’ve traveled some, much more, in fact, than Emily ever did, but not as much as others. We all have our geographic limitations that time and money impose. Even those who walked on the moon never went to all earthly locales. And although I’ve seen some foreign lands, I have not traveled to all other places by, excuse the mixed metaphor as Emily writes, riding a “Chariot” pulled by “Coursers” that are “pages” of “prancing Poetry.”
Space and Time. I’ve traveled through both, reaching vicariously as far as Mars and farther back in time than either Göbekli Tepe or the arguably older Karahan Tepe. I’ve visited an older settlement, one called Meadowcroft, located in Avella, Pennsylvania, not far from where I live, the rock shelter with evidence of habitation going back 16,000 years. And in traveling backward through time as a professor teaching paleontology, I’ve dug for and found fossils that predate both those Mideast structures and Meadowcroft by not just thousands, but by millions of years. I’ve seen and walked on rocks that predate all humanity by billions of years, also. You, though you might never have studied paleontology or geology, have also traveled over ancient geography, and assuredly, like Emily, live in an area once radically different from today’s appearance, the poetess, too, having lived near the igneous mass of Mount Holyoke that stands above the more recently cut Connecticut River valley. Geology was a child when Emily lived in sight of that massive mound of ancient rock; otherwise, she might have written about traveling through time as well as through space. She lived where Native Americans had once built their shelters, also. She lived where once no humans traversed the land. An ancient world lay beneath her feet, beneath her home and garden, and if she had climbed Mount Holyoke, she could have looked down on her home built a distant 200 million years after the mountain had turned from magma to solid rock.
Emily, as I said, might have no incentive to leave her self-imposed quarantine were she alive today. I imagine her now as she lived then, a recluse traveling by book and today by YouTube as well, her life a virtual one; her experiences, vicarious ones. During a pandemic, many have become incarnations of Emily, missing in the process the actual feel of an outside world, relegating themselves to views chosen by the camera holder or videographer.
If you decide to take a trip to Göbekli Tepe or Karahan Tepe via YouTube or through a professional or popular journal article, recognize that the perspective you get of both time and space is someone else’s perspective. A view captured by a lens or in an article might miss what you could see in person. As much as a YouTube voyage enthralls, it also deprives because it really doesn’t substitute for being there. But, alas, we’ve become virtual travelers nowadays, and even before imposed quarantining shut down the travel industry, we relied on virtual reality for much of our travel.
We are endowed with neither omnipresence nor eternal life. We don’t have, as Andrew Marvell phrases it in “To His Coy Mistress,” “world enough and time.” So, we cheat both Time and Space through vicarious experience. We travel by book and YouTube. We sit to go. And we visit by those frigates more places than Emily could even have imagined. Emily! I’m telling you, I’ve been to Mars and flown over its surface on a machine that wasn’t even invented in your time. And Emily, I have traveled farther back in time than you knew time extended. I’ve seen images of the universe just after its birth 13.8 billion years ago. No, I haven’t stood on a distant world, but I have, nevertheless vicariously visited more than one of them. And I have held in my hand the remains of life-forms hundreds of millions of years old, allowing me to transcend the limitations of my finiteness and to reverse the flight of Time’s arrow. Come to think of it, I have conquered not only Space, but also Time. I have traveled both by traveling and by staying put. I might not be omnipresent throughout the universe, but I have been on frigates that sailed both seas and skies. Without getting wet, I have gone into the deepest parts of the ocean. Without getting cold, I have climbed Mt. Everest or wended my way across an Antarctic glacier.
I’ve experienced on both real and virtual frigates more world and time than the poetess could have imagined. And I'm guessing that you have, too.
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