Running for Your Life: Summer Screen Screams

Here’s a short film idea:

• ·      Cast a small comedian as a Harp Marx lookalike who is dressed in exaggerated runner’s wear.

He is attempting to run along a designated jogging path in an urban park that is chock full of people staring blithely, obliviously, into their smartphones/gadgets and he continually “blats” his rubber-bulb horn to clear a path in their startled midst so that he can run a relatively straight line through them.

• ·        Consider the problem of doing a remake of “Candid Camera.”

Alas, it wouldn’t fly because such footage of behavior that embarrasses or calls out social and personal gaffes is no longer of interest, cannot be seen to be entertainment, not in a culture in which the majority of people have moved beyond being shamed for conducting themselves in a way that would shock their mothers.

Next: Running for Your Life: Routine 66

Running for Your Life: “We Give to the Point of Extinction”: Country Porch Notes

I was sitting on the recently screened-in sun porch of a historic country house this past holiday weekend (July 4-7) in Cuddebackville, New York, thinking about men, spiritualism and empathy.

The superstitions of warrior-men. What they carry with them. Consider re-reading “What They “Carried” by Tim O’Brien. Think of the ecstasy of Ryan O’Reilly, winning the sports medal of sports medals, the Stanley Cup.

How men, poor sodden souls, cannot help but be seduced by the idea of help that comes from somewhere beyond now. So much asked of you, the universal man, the household god, grow into the role, not just of provider but for the love of mother, the need of wife, the respect of daughter.

When we stop we die so we never stop. The sun begins to fall into the rectangular spaces of the porch, the sun the top of the dog’s head. He wants something from me, this coonhound, the feel of his paw on my leg like a soldier’s grasp. Pay attention, man. Yield to what’s necessary. Now the sun is overhead. From here the front door is open and I’m content to think that the cabin was never more than a three-room space with the sitting, sleeping room built off the fireplace/stove on the other side of the central fireplace, a place to hang a kettle (pot) to boil water, erect a grille to fix meat and vegetables, a country sink for rinsing food, washing up. Your outhouse, I like the idea of the half-moon cut in the window, wondering where it was located, high ground, of course.

Imagine a love nest, the children arriving like animals secure in their owned life in this special hollow, a valley, a sling of living and ghostly things, you being just one with them, all you need do is sit and listen, and, thank God, empathize, taste the tongue feels, touch at your fingertips. What is country when ownership is the furthest thing from your mind? Sin of pride? Absent.

Empathy …. What’s the distinguishing factor that defines man. Ergo, that we would defy the law of nature, and risk our lives for others. Jumping in to save a drowning stranger; the body chemicals that engage when a traveler comes to our door, seeking advice, assistance. We give to the point of our own extinction …

Next: Running for Your Life: Routine 66

Running for Your Life: New York Therapy Insight

Overheard during Sunday, June 30, 2019, run in Prospect Park, near the twin-skating surfaces:

Mother/Distressed Daughter (3-ish years old)

Mother (staring hard at Distressed Daughter, while pulling her along by the hand): You are so lucky that it was nice family who found you! Imagine if it were a mean man …

Distressed Daughter: Wah!

Mother: You should feel bad. I want you to feel bad.

DD: Wah!

Mother: Cry! That’s it, cry! It’s the one thing you’ve got right today.

DD: Wah!

Mother: Scared? You should be scared!

(One would expect, given Mother’s mood, she was a long way from saying all she was going to say about Distressed Daughter’s day, but I was running at the time and only caught this portion of the dialogue [monologue?].)

Next: Running for Your Life: Rigidity Lesson

Running for Your Life: Rachel Carson on My Mind

Okay. Here’s to Rachel Carson. “Silent Spring” Lady. Time to shout out loud.

It was “Silent” in 1960 (I was five years old) when her startingly beautifully written and unbelievably prescient book was published.

She, equally presciently, died from cancer in 1964.

Here’s, also, to Library of America, which has chosen season (actually Spring 2018) to publish,

“Silent Spring and Other Writings on the Environment” by Rachel Carson.

Here’s also to the London Review of Books for publishing in its June 6 edition a review by Meehan Crist.

Here are three samples from  Crist’s review: 

1/ Human activity has led to the stripmallification of nature: complex forest ecosystems are cleared to make way for fields of a single crop; grasslands and wetlands are paved over for the expansion of roads and cities; non-native species – carried from here to there by humans – eat the local food and kill the local young and homogenise formerly diverse landscapes as effectively as any bulldozer; whole animal populations already poisoned by pesticides and pollution are hunted or fished to a ghostly semblance of their former density, and their absence in turn damages the ecosystems in which they once thrived.

2/ Sperm counts in men around the world have dropped by 50 per cent in the last four decades – men today are half as fertile as their grandfathers were. If this downward trend continues, as it seems to be doing, humanity may be incapable of unassisted reproduction within decades. 

3/ A capitalist system built on the plunder of the natural world must inevitably be threatened by a grassroots movement to stop that plunder.

Yes, folks. Time to shout out loud.

Next: Running for Your Life: Routine 66

Running for Your Life: Falafel Guy

Falafel guy is wearing

A T-shirt

That says

I’m OK

The meals he prepares

Are delicious, ample

And a quarter the price

Of Midtown cafes that pony up

The Trumpist lease money

To keep their doers open.

Still, I’ve yet to see a line

Form behind me when

He is busy with fixing

The chicken tikka: ripe tomato slice,

Fresh salad greens, cucumber

Slab, generous slather of homemade relish,

White sauce, squirt-ropes of hot sauce.

I like your T-shirt, I say.

Thank you, he says with an

Open smile. Then a blessing in Arabic,

In his business, which is neither popular nor original,

He thanks God every day.

People live on the street, he says.

When I see them like that how can I

Not thank God for what I have?

Then he utters a second Arabic blessing

Before we exchange honest wishes

That the other has a great day.

Next: Running for Your Life: Rachel Carson on My Mind