Virtual vs Visceral

I’m having the virtual experience of taking a month-long class every day via Skype. The kind of virtual that has as much in common with the Optics definition in its feel of a backward reality, and with the Physics definition in its indefiniteness, as it does with the Computing definition: manufactured appearances.

virtual (ˈvərCHo͞oəl). almost or nearly as described, but not completely or according to strict definition.

• Computing: not physically existing as such but made by software to appear to do so: a virtual computer. See also virtual reality.
• Optics: relating to the points at which rays would meet if produced backward.
• Physics: denoting particles or interactions with extremely short lifetimes and (owing to the uncertainty principle) indefinitely great energies.
  

While I sit on my porch in North Carolina, Skyping in with my laptop, the course in which I’m quasi-participating is meeting face-to-face in Costa Rica. The Director calls me on Skype and then carries me (on her laptop) from her office to the classroom. We sway down the hallway and my body responds with dizziness. “I’ll put you here,” she says, placing the laptop on a table at the back of the room. Before I can say that I can’t read the board, she says adios and reminds me to mute my microphone.

I’m in Costa Rica. The international students come into the room, and before class, talk among themselves about the intense heat and their weekend beach escapades. They know intellectually that I am “present” but we do not interact, and they forget that I can hear them. I’m in Costa Rica, without a body. The class begins and I take notes, lifting my coffee cup from my table here on the porch in North Carolina. Yet, my hearing and seeing reach to Costa Rica. And in a way that does not feel virtual, I send a sense of my whole self into that room. My presence, to me, feels physical and visceral.

visceral (‘vis(ə)rəl). instinctual, gut, deep-seated, deep-rooted, relating to inward feelings rather than to the intellect

By the end of four hours, bi-location has disoriented me. I stagger up. I do not risk speaking to my girlfriend for another several hours, because I do not wish to hear my own grievances and grumblings, and because the disorientation has made my speech faculty a bit fuzzy. I realize that I am a human being who finds satisfaction in attending to one thing at a time, and doing it well, one who never before realized that this might require a stable location.

The course is Teaching English as a Foreign Language, and in order to model the kind of classroom conducive to teaching a second language to adults, a good TEFL classroom is what’s termed a communicative one. That means I am generally not listening to lectures, but rather, am eavesdropping on teaching activities. Myriad activities.

I am present, but without the physical presence that could take any part in the activities. I am a cyber ghost hovering in the screen. Once in a while, one of the students walks by and waves at me. From the table where the Director’s laptop (with me “in it”) is perched, I see the whiteboard at which the camera eye is aimed. I therefore miss most of the activity and must glean what I can, from the audio, about what they’re actually doing. Most activities include handouts such as verb cards, game pieces or resource drawings, which I try to surmise but cannot view, no matter how I twist my neck.

Usually the students are talking in pairs and groups—from my aural “perspective,” this frequently translates to All-Talking-At-Once. It is reminiscent of my childhood, during which I grew up as an auditory-sensitive, the fourth in a family of nine children, surrounded by constant voices. Cacophony is all I knew, and all I fled, as soon as I could. After an afternoon on Skype for this course, I am again five years old, covering my ears in the midst of what feels like shouting throngs. Here in North Carolina on my Senior Housing apartment porch, after several hours, the voices pouring through the earphones blend into a single shattering of my equilibrium.

A few other challenges figure in, like Costa Rica power outages one or two times each and every session. During the third week, the audio starts to break down into screeching skips, as if made by a crazed DJ. I want to tear the earphones off, but I need to listen for teacher instruction. In the fourth week, a background sound is added to the mix, an otherworldly high-to-low ET sound. This is the week of review. Many times I hear something like this:  And this is important for the final exam.. ack eep bleep oot .. so be sure to write that down!  I get slightly better at guessing what’s being said behind the puzzle of missing syllables and phrases. I finally arrive at the who-cares-anyway stage— After all, it’s only temporary, and the process (not the course)is so very bad, that eventually I have to find the tech difficulties hysterically amusing.

The deeper Skype difficulty is the multitasking itself. Some might find it a breeze, a gift of detachment, even, to take a course via Skype. But not only is this excellent course not set up for it –it’s a courtesy and an exception, being made for me since I got sick and couldn’t complete the in-person course last month, — but more importantly, I’m not the person to learn this way. At the end of one of these class days, I go to sleep and dream an arm punching straight out of an open mouth.

I’m a poet. I like to go deep into something real and small, delve deep enough to discover its place in the cosmos. Still, it’s an enlightening experiment with process, granting me a fresh appreciation for the way I normally get to live. How graced I feel to be incarnated as an earthling, with amazing physical senses, and a challenge like Skyping for four weeks that awakens me anew to senses’ wonders.  Give me visceral over virtual, anytime! Blessed be for good old physical reality in one, bodacious, real time/space moment after another. Ahhhhhh.