I was mulling over the word 'remote' last night. What does 'remote' mean in today's technology-driven world?

Does it imply a hermit in the distant mountains?

It was around 8pm and I was waiting for word from a ship called The Antarctic Dream in Dorion Bay, Antarctica. They had just finished The Last Desert race, and I was waiting – as the 'remote writer' for the event - for news from a laptop at the southernmost tip of the planet, to bounce messages off a satellite in outer space and bring information to my Mac in Maine. So that I could then distribute these words to minds in 22 countries.

It wasn't quite working... there was a glitch in the system, an oddly-aligned planetary shift, and so the news was not quite coming through. And for a second, those runners in the White Continent became truly remote. They fell out of contact. They fell through the illusion and disappeared.

And I pondered what it meant - at that very moment - for me to be the remote writer of this event? Who was remote now? I considered how technology allows us to remain connected - when it decides to work, that is. And suddenly now, in today's world, to be remote is to be immensely connected. To be present - beyond our physical presence. To being a hologram, a globally-connected butterfly, whose real location is in a still forest yet who flies by night through cityscapes.

In the past few weeks, something has shifted. I am still sitting in the quiet hermit's cave, but I am simultaneously flying around the world and communing with all manner of characters. I am reporting on racers at the South Pole, chattering with my colleague in Hong Kong and brainstorming with a friend in New Zealand about our fabulous new project. I am in all of these places.

Yet, I have not left the building.

Is it karma that decides that one day you will be solitary and the next that you will burst into a web of life?


(Credit: isconti-Sforza tarot deck. Hermit. 15th century)

Okay, so the writing a novel in a month didn't really work out for me this year. It was a success in 2009, but that was an era without a Greencard, in complete immigrant-mode without friends or social connections of any kind, and basically I had all this time to sit at an antique wooden desk and write from the deepest reaches of my self. 

This year, after posting that ambitious blog entry, I promptly disappeared for a few days to a Buddhist retreat in New York. Then I came back to Maine, and starting teaching weekly meditation classes in Portland - and was studying and preparing for that. Then I was hit by a slam of work - editing, writing, dreaming, conspiring.

Which brings us to the penguins. Today, in fact right now at this very moment in time, at the southernmost tip of this planet, amid the snow and ice and sub-zero environment of Antarctica, a group of 54 endurance athletes are running a 15-hour day, in an attempt to cover thousands of kilometers. It's a week-long event that will eventually cover 250km of fierce frozen terrain. They are all out there, alone, cold, tired, and needing to keep running.

As all of this is transpiring, in a land far, far away in the not-so-freezing confines of my garden apartment in Southern Maine; as I sip milky tea and listen to NPR and have the glow of the fire making me think of chestnuts and Christmas carols – I am the official writer who is covering this race. I sit by my computer, and when the news starts flying in, I write it and craft it into sensible word flows and post it online, and on all corners of the Earth, family members and loved ones will read the updates and know how the athletes are faring.

Welcome to the 21st century, the realm of the holographic writer.

(Oh and you can follow the event by clicking here)

Photo credit:  Wiki Commons