Surveillance

1. Living in a surveilled society usually puts me on edge, on guard, at the very least wishing I'd employed a comb before leaving the house; I see cameras and screens and think that we are trapped, and we are, on monitors in color or black and white, depending.

2. Today I looked at surveillance video from Monday's Boston Marathon bombing, the two suspects who looked young, like kids (8 year old among the dead, and I can't even let my brain visit that subject, no, I can't, the gap-toothed smile, the birthday hat), wearing caps and backpacks and loping lankily down the sidewalk, and me and my husband speculating on their story, their reason, their M.O., the stories upon stories we are creating from what we see on this screen, the one in our house that shows people from another place on another screen.

3. The cameras did what they were supposed to do, but not in time to prevent. Only to punish.

4. When I enter the grocery store, I look up and see myself on the security camera's screen. I always make eye contact with myself. I imagine this footage of me needing to be released, because this is the footage we see of people, sometimes. Smiling or unaware or sniffing kumquats, being ordinary, being alive. We are being watched, but I want it to be known, now and later if it becomes necessary: I'm watching, too. You, whoever you are, viewing from another location: I cannot see you but I know you're there.

5. Forget obsolete videotape in the digital world: now what we waste is time. How much footage have we sifted through, how many moments must we relive only to discard them? We rewind and fast-forward and make judgement calls about what these images are worth, these images as people were and no longer are, soaked in dumb beauty and exaggerated humanity, o the lives we will never get back.