Running for Your Life: The Movie

On black screen the sound of hospital machinery, beeps and whooshes and splunks. As if from a deep murky well, a face appears. An old man staring down, noise of a buzzer, then immediately a female voice, “Yes, Sam?” “Get in here quick; he’s stopped breathing.” Then, a young woman in nurse cap replaces old man’s face, she too staring down, noisily fiddles with something and then as loud as anything yet we hear the sound of a heartbeat, then the gasp of a single breath. Then another.

Fade. Slowly developing image of young man in ill-fitting hospital gown. Scraggly beard. He is at the window and places hand on glass, makes for a palm print on the icy pane. Nurse comes in and calls his name. “Larry, over here, time to take your pills.” L looks up and into the glass, starts a bit, as if for the first time he sees himself as he is, wasting away, as if he has been a POW in the South Pacific, hint of being hardened to his fate but then something sad comes to mind, and he bows his head, body shuddering, weeping.

Black, then image appears of a ice rink, younger and athletic version of L is vigorously playing hockey, collides hard with a defenseman in the corner, separates his rival from the puck, closeup shots so that we sense the micro, not macro, of an intense young athlete, then pan back, our hero with his stick raised high, the puck, in a perfect pass, sails to him and he is in all alone on the goalie, fakes a deke and snaps a shot to low stick side, not hard but ideal placement, goalie feels as if he’s got it but the puck zips through, buzzer and elation, L is surrounded by fellow victors, what feels like a goal of a lifetime.

Back to real time. L is in a college cafeteria with his tray; he has not come with his friends, is alone, attractive girl on the cash, you can tell that in another time they may have flirted with one another. But when the skeleton of after-hospital L raises his head, the cashier girl looks away, pregnant pause in the food line. L looks easily five to ten years older than everyone else, decrepit and without a single sympathetic outlet. Jumpcut to him at a table alone, one of the last diners in the place, picks at a plate of food that’s hardly eaten, good-looking students take their trays past him, giving him a wide berth . . .

This movie is being interrupted by an important social commentary. Please be patient .¤.¤.

As if modern society weren’t uncivil enough, witness family and nonfamily gatherings across classes, the slipping away of conversation as an art, the loss of those deepening personal relationships through a mutual sharing of meaningful observations, loving touches as those primarily Under Forty (Take note New Yorker) stare into their gadget screens and thumb their way into self-sensory oblivion, beware the next phase. The thought came to me yesterday (August 15) as I was finishing up a tidy 3-miler, not an idea triggered by the deaf runners in Prospect Park (See R4YrLife: Running Without Headphones, Aug. 25, 2010), of which there are not many when I get out between 11 and 11:30 a.m. these days. Rather it struck me as I was coming upon a place where M and I saw a worker drop an oversized lightbulb that shattered, creating a public hazard on a Park Slope sidewalk. The worker didn’t stop to pick up the pieces, or try to sweep up the big shards at least, even though included among the items he was carrying was a broom. M kicked herself, saying that she wished she had the whole thing on video, possible because her camera does have such a function. Yesterday, though, I thought in the not too distant future we will have wearable computers (computerwear, the new product category), which will undoubtedly have fine quality and extremely easy-to-use cameras that in the young company I keep that seems to be the obsession, taking pictures, moving pictures of the most banal events: dining, stopping for coffee, applying makeup at Sephora, the sum total of the technology’s use to document the self and its activities, however everyday.

Yet imagine the self-glorification of these wearable computers, a bit of necklace, say, that can with exquisite resolution snap and create moving pictures of you and your loved ones, moment to moment, and when it comes to the uncivil bit, obtain perfectly clear evidence when you are the victim of an actionable slight: say, rude behavior on the street, or if you see what seems a criminal act between a parent and a child, or to go back to the example of the worker and the lightbulb, to shame, perhaps lead to the loss of the worker’s job because his action was caught on computer high-def video, now evidence for ambulance chaser lawyers, wearable computers, read: 24-hour personal surveillance video.

So don’t look up from your portable screen. Maybe we can have them implanted so that all – not just the majority – of urban pedestrians will literally be in their own screen- (read corporate-, don’t kid yourself) directed world. Better that way, minus the uncertainty, the sense that you may just make eye contact, maybe even share a casual hello, with a perfect stranger. Or that you may be aware that someone has thought to keep a door open to a shop for you, to have the presence of mind to smile and say “Thank you.” Or maybe even, “Very kind of you.” Because a relationship-enriching conversation isn’t going to break out in a void. The void that is taking over, as we all become, increasingly, strangers to everyone but ourselves, perfect and otherwise.

Next: Running for Your Life: The Movie, Continued