Screens
Many days are spent looking at screens
Information, plans, stories and advertisements projected onto backlit rectangles
Formatted to keep my attention, to distract, to engage
I pause looking at one screen to be absorbed by another
My gaze captured by entertaining snapshots from other people’s lives
Work reports, email threads, reminders and to-do lists
Curated news stories presenting an interpretation of current events around the globe
Treatises of what is wrong, and how to analyze and fix it in five easy steps
Narratives of suffering and joy
Pretty pictures of food, nature, human bodies, inventions, art and fashion
All vying for a space to be heard, seen, taken in, believed
How did we navigate our existence before screens?
Were we less efficient?
More present in the moment?
Were we better acquainted with our neighbor, with the stream flowing through our community?
Were we more finite and limited in our knowledge and awareness?
Perhaps we moved our bodies to dance and our hands to build, looking up at the sky or out across the ocean
Perhaps our world was larger and wilder, and we were more distracted by disease and war
Or perhaps life was not too different than it is now
We have simply found another mode of travel through it
Images move at the speed of light around me, zipping along invisible wavelengths
Filling my moments
Becoming the primary medium I use to work, communicate and play
Many days it seems screens have become the eyes I use to see the world
Screening
She sits in the hospital, wishing the day was over
And yet, it would be one less day to cherish, to remember
She chides herself, having given up the ‘wish away’ thinking years ago
At the first sign of the cancer
This battle had taught her to number her days, to turn away from blissful ignorance
Some days it was a fight with herself, other days it was a partnership
To see each breath as a gift
Today is the annual screening
An anniversary, a reminder, a cruel joke
A waiting game to hear the words, “cancer free”
An opportunity to celebrate
A young boy is learning to read across the room
Cautiously sounding out syllables like a security guard sizing up a visitor
Ten minutes ago she was peeing in a cup
Being poked in the arm, losing blood
Her body inspected head to toe by a stranger
She is the book being read
Is this the beginning, middle, or end?
Screened
The river is shallow and wide
The blue sky reflected on the dark black water
Round rocks poking out from the surface like white mushroom caps
Flanked by matted grasses and scraggly trees clinging to the arid earth
We kneel, trying to keep the cold water out of our gum boots
Letting the current run across the round sieves in our hands
Filled with mud, pebbles, detritus
The load lightening with each rush of water
Circling, shaking, inspecting
Carefully we sift, hoping to see a flash of gold
Knowing the land has been picked clean over the centuries
We try each side of the river, behind rock formations and in collection pools
The Colorado sun beating down on our necks
Other seekers have ridged sluices, metal pans, hoses and axes
We have one set of plastic screens
Winter’s light casts long shadows
We begin to shiver, slowing down our search
The river bed is preparing for the melting snow to swell its banks
We are waiting to see what a new year brings
Passing time together as we pan for gold
Not as a way to get rich
But hoping to find value nonetheless
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