Soylent Green. Blade Runner. Children of Men.
Googling the dates he thinks, I guess I’m living at a time when a bunch of dystopian films take place.
He has kids but decided that tonight after work he needed to eat a burrito by himself on the beach. His wife understood. She knows it can be a tool for thinking, a type of cheap therapy even, devouring a burrito solo on the coast.
All this week the local news had been warning of a big storm, now due to arrive the next day, and the man wanted to spend at least a little time outside before the rains came. Parking at the beach he sees many people standing around and viewing the sunset through their devices, taking pictures and videos.
The man walks away from the crowds. In search of a peaceful spot, he is at one point overtaken by a family of four, each on a Onewheel and all wearing ankle socks with no shoes. The family speeds by him, electric motors humming, and eventually vanishes around a promontory. The man settles on an empty patch of sand. He faces the ocean, unwraps his burrito, and begins to eat.
Reviewing the week he thinks it wasn’t totally dystopian, but it wasn’t great either. He often wishes he had a job that did not require him to be online for so much of the day. He checks the news often and sometimes gets stuck in these kinds of grief loops. You know?
The first time it happened he spent days mourning monarchs and the people who protect them, struggling to articulate to his wife why this story was making it difficult for him to get out of bed. Later there was this video of a former president’s bungling admission of guilt for an unjust war that began over two decades ago. The man had spent subsequent days rewatching this video while thinking back to his younger self, how he eagerly participated in some of the largest protests in the history of the world, aimed at trying to stop the war. After all this time it's still easy to recall those initial feelings of certainty and jubilation, the expectation that the protests would make a difference, and the resulting cynicism that crept in when they didn’t.
It's a delicious burrito. A pretty good sunset. Towards the end of both he’s able to feel present in the moment and not so aware of George W. Bush or even the prospect of ecological collapse.
On the way back to his car the man notices that most of the people who were watching the sunset are now gone. Of those who are left, the majority are looking down at their phones. In the parking lot the man threads his way between a cluster of dark, towering Sprinter vans outfitted for armageddon and facing the beach. As he passes through the canyons created by these vehicles, he looks up at their tinted windows and with one hand renders a simple thumbs down; the impulse, as well as the resulting gesture, feels vague, almost meaningless, and yet somehow life affirming. He smiles.
Driving home the man half-listens to an in-depth news story about how Taco Bell successfully brought back the Mexican pizza. He wonders how his kids are doing. He wonders who abandoned the latest couch in his neighborhood; for some reason, they always appear on this one particular corner.
I mean really, who knows what tomorrow’s headlines will say? Strange to find solace in what a storm might give or take away.