…running will be the way your life and mine will be described.
As in, the long run or
As in, having given someone a run for their money or
As in, running out of time.
When do we stop? When does it calm down? When do these hurried years slow down and wait for you to make up the distance and meet them by the fountain in the park? I don’t know. A childhood friend, Alistair, ran ran ran. I begged him to walk, pleaded that he breathe deeply, asked him to envision a snail in the downpour of a rattling thunderstorm and how slowly it slithers in the midst of chaos. I was young. I was wrong.
Who thinks these thoughts? Athletes in hundred meter sprints, muscles and ligaments sweating through their skin. Homo sapien housebodies quiet by the dining room fireplace, partners handing them mugs of decaf coffee to sip on while the room is bare; the air, silent.
When do you think these thoughts? In your waking moments, blurred-eyed and disinterested. In your sleeping moments, abruptly shaken from film noir night terrors. In the seconds you hesitate before saying, “I do.” In the seconds you contemplate before leaving the room. In your living room thumbing through chocolate biscuits, crumbs sticking to your skin, watching Swedish films with taglines like Att fly är livet, att dröja döden (To flee is life; to linger, death). In uncertainty. In every breath. [I’m new here.]
Gil Scott-Heron – The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
On June 18th, 2071, at 12:34am: televisions will turn off. Monochrome sets. Colour sets. High definition, three-dimensional sets. Television screens across the planet will hum, black out, leave a minuscule circle of despair in the center of the frame. People will stop, look at each other, pull their arms from the shoulders of those next to them. Feel uncomfortable. Scrape the musky bottoms of their brains for conversation, for something to say. The wires will fray and burn. Satellites will tumble quietly from the midnight sky. Some people will make salami and cheese sandwiches. Some will rifle through cupboards for one of few straggling paperbacks. Some will riot and revolt and kill. Some will stop, sigh, use their thumbs to pull down their eyelids, die. [What remains of all the pieces of a man.]