My father asked if I wanted to see my grandmother's body, and I refused.
Both parents went to see her, adorned with purple flowers, and the head which age had caused to slump to one side now straightened at last.
I was assured she is at peace, and it has even been said that she now exudes a permanent look of happiness. Nevertheless, it was more than I could do to look for myself.
In previous posts, I remember mentioning some of the television images which terrified me as a child: Kennedy's brain being scrambled by an assassin's bullet; the Turin Shroud; the mask of Tutankhamun; an anti-smoking advertisement showing a diseased lung with a doctor pointing at the most damaged parts with a stick or wand of some description.
I keep myself far from death, even as it is theoretically around the next corner. I am scared to acknowledge it lest a vague acquaintance turns stalker, misting up the windows of my flat with its kisses; sending its blankets through the mail; wrapping me around its finger as I sleep; composing threatening missives from NatWest that call in the debt.
Yet tomorrow, I have to look death in the eye, and he'll no doubt make a note of my name. This is what I did to your grandmother, progressively cutting away at her earthly ties, severing them one by one until she found rest.
If only the western mind could shed itself of the image of the grim reaper, the dark giant with a scythe on an insane, endless rampage. If only this western mind could!
If only the bleak synopsis could be dissolved, that of the infinite gathering its harvest. No-one, least of all your author, sees death as the gift which comes when all our work is done and all our lessons learned.
No, it takes an Elisabeth Kübler-Ross to do that, to free us from frightening images, to cease the lips which utter bitter comparisons between death and taxes. Kübler-Ross would have it that the untethered soul of my grandmother is now floating brightly like a gaudy shirt on a line or a butterfly, adjacent to that of the husband she lost too quickly.
On the eve of the funeral - it starts in ten hours - I thus know that the body which is left behind and which I cannot let my eyes turn towards, is nothing more than a vessel which carried my grandmother's energy, and that energy returned to the cosmos last week.
It is long gone, the arrears settled with nature, and becoming the soil, the breeze, the trees, a cycle to which we attribute petrifying mental pictures and fearsome titles.
The pictures, the soubriquets, do nobody any good. It is natural, nothing more, and the inevitability of death should not cause one to freeze. Perhaps in future I might convince myself that I said no to the visit because the husk I would see is no more my grandmother than the photograph of her that I have, but between the reader and I, there is still some way to go until I reach that exalted state of mind.
Sunday, 8 August 2010
Tuesday, 3 August 2010
Monday.
My grandmother died on Monday morning.
I woke up late, to at least ten missed phonecalls, and I didn't even have to ring any of the numbers to know what had happened.
I saw it in a dream on Friday, anyway, my mother's voice saying: she's gone, and I twisted like a snake in my bedclothes as the shock jolted me awake.
As it turned out, she was still alive at the point I did speak to my mother, and this time it wasn't a dream. You better come, because yer gran's on her way out. I threw on whatever clothes I could find, and commenced the race which I knew I was never going to win.
I dashed out of the flat, making for the train station as fast as I could. I'd got as far as the street named after an Australian city, where I'd lived until April, when my phone rang again. I couldn't make anything out at the other end, and I said: has it happened? ended the call, and began to cry. It was 11:25am.
When someone dies, it is beyond me to know what it is appropriate to do. Is it right to buy a newspaper to read on the train (even though I'm already too late?) Is it right to accept a sandwich and a cup of tea? Is it appropriate to feel a sense of loss one minute, and the next minute derive some sort of satisfaction because her suffering has drawn to a close at last, a good two years or so after her remaining quality of life dwindled away?
For the last couple of years, we had to watch as my grandmother was pared down by age, in the same way the water carves away at the body of a stricken ship, capitalising on its immobility and helplessness to sweeten the flesh which drops away in intervals the eye can measure. The last time I ever saw her, what remained of her mind had broken off and, thus lobotomised, she addressed my father and I only in shouts of pain, the sorts of sound made by cattle in distress, otherwise never opening her eyes.
I've not yet realised she's gone. I said before that bad news comes from the stars - it takes a long time to reach its intended recipients. That I dare not even go to see the body (of which more later) means that I cannot accept that the marbling stillness into which my grandmother has been transformed was once animate, and therefore I cannot yet accept her death.
I woke up late, to at least ten missed phonecalls, and I didn't even have to ring any of the numbers to know what had happened.
I saw it in a dream on Friday, anyway, my mother's voice saying: she's gone, and I twisted like a snake in my bedclothes as the shock jolted me awake.
As it turned out, she was still alive at the point I did speak to my mother, and this time it wasn't a dream. You better come, because yer gran's on her way out. I threw on whatever clothes I could find, and commenced the race which I knew I was never going to win.
I dashed out of the flat, making for the train station as fast as I could. I'd got as far as the street named after an Australian city, where I'd lived until April, when my phone rang again. I couldn't make anything out at the other end, and I said: has it happened? ended the call, and began to cry. It was 11:25am.
When someone dies, it is beyond me to know what it is appropriate to do. Is it right to buy a newspaper to read on the train (even though I'm already too late?) Is it right to accept a sandwich and a cup of tea? Is it appropriate to feel a sense of loss one minute, and the next minute derive some sort of satisfaction because her suffering has drawn to a close at last, a good two years or so after her remaining quality of life dwindled away?
For the last couple of years, we had to watch as my grandmother was pared down by age, in the same way the water carves away at the body of a stricken ship, capitalising on its immobility and helplessness to sweeten the flesh which drops away in intervals the eye can measure. The last time I ever saw her, what remained of her mind had broken off and, thus lobotomised, she addressed my father and I only in shouts of pain, the sorts of sound made by cattle in distress, otherwise never opening her eyes.
I've not yet realised she's gone. I said before that bad news comes from the stars - it takes a long time to reach its intended recipients. That I dare not even go to see the body (of which more later) means that I cannot accept that the marbling stillness into which my grandmother has been transformed was once animate, and therefore I cannot yet accept her death.
Thursday, 29 July 2010
Hero.
It was my grandmother's 90th birthday last week, but on the big day itself she was so unwell that she was unaware of the great age she had reached.
She spent the day collapsing in on herself, akin to a great dying star whose own weight is too much for it. She too has the distance and aloofness of a star, unmoved as others orbit around her.
For lack of anything else to do, I started to look around my grandmother's room at the assortment of photographs and heirlooms put there for her.
There's a photograph of my grandmother on her wedding day with my late grandfather. In recent months, gran's illness has caused her to confuse my father and her late husband:
Father: Who am I?
Grandmother: Walter.
F: How can I be Walter? Am I as old as you?
G: I don't know how, but you're Walter. You always get me raffled up [confused].
In addition to the photograph, there is my grandfather's commemorative plate, given to him after he'd completed 36 years at the steelworks:
THE UNITED STEEL COMPANIES LTD
FOR LONG SERVICE
W STEVENSON 36 YEARS
SAMUEL FOX AND COMPANY LIMITED
My father saw me pick up the plate to have a closer look and commented: "That's all you get for giving your life to them - a bloody plate."
It reminded me of the spoils of war. Go into battle, and give so much that the body is irreparable; and the reward for this is a to become a piece of metal with your name on, the hero who was taken all too quickly.
The best years of a man's life, and the sweetness of retirement, exchanged for the proletarian's equivalent of a medal. Toil and sweat, endlessly, but at least you're given something upon which those left behind can rest your ashes.
She spent the day collapsing in on herself, akin to a great dying star whose own weight is too much for it. She too has the distance and aloofness of a star, unmoved as others orbit around her.
For lack of anything else to do, I started to look around my grandmother's room at the assortment of photographs and heirlooms put there for her.
There's a photograph of my grandmother on her wedding day with my late grandfather. In recent months, gran's illness has caused her to confuse my father and her late husband:
Father: Who am I?
Grandmother: Walter.
F: How can I be Walter? Am I as old as you?
G: I don't know how, but you're Walter. You always get me raffled up [confused].
In addition to the photograph, there is my grandfather's commemorative plate, given to him after he'd completed 36 years at the steelworks:
THE UNITED STEEL COMPANIES LTD
FOR LONG SERVICE
W STEVENSON 36 YEARS
SAMUEL FOX AND COMPANY LIMITED
My father saw me pick up the plate to have a closer look and commented: "That's all you get for giving your life to them - a bloody plate."
It reminded me of the spoils of war. Go into battle, and give so much that the body is irreparable; and the reward for this is a to become a piece of metal with your name on, the hero who was taken all too quickly.
The best years of a man's life, and the sweetness of retirement, exchanged for the proletarian's equivalent of a medal. Toil and sweat, endlessly, but at least you're given something upon which those left behind can rest your ashes.
Sunday, 25 July 2010
Insanity.
When assessing the level of insanity suffered by a madman, one can and should do so by comparing the hold which his unstable cognitions have upon him, as against the true world, characterised by sense-perceptions, which the non-mad majority of us experience.
The true madman, then, regards the byproducts of his sickness as inscrutably normal. Less severe cases accept that their intense visions and thoughts are, whilst agonisingly real, nevertheless just the unfortunate consequence of a particular condition.
It was with these sorts of ideas preavalent that I caught a late train into the city on Friday night, for the purpose of meeting a woman about whom there remains much to be said.
Your author has long held aloft the primacy of the scientific method as far as differentiating between competing ideas; and of course long ago jettisoned religion. Yet the imprint of belief and irrationality remains, not far from the surface, and needs little excuse to rise through the pores.
It so happens that I mentioned feathers to the woman about whom there remains much to be said. I mentioned them to her, and therefore the feather, for the two of us, became a symbol, a directional arrow pointing into the future.
On Friday night, then, I was waiting for the late train, the 9:49pm service. It had been a last-minute decision to meet at all, and I couldn't be sure that she would go through with it; and even if she did I'd no idea where she'd be.
Pacing the platform, I needed a message from my own insanity, dropped into the arena in which I live. I required a symbol which connected the two - and, of course, there was a feather at my feet as I looked down.
I put it in between the pages of the book I was reading to kill the time. Little white flame that it is, licking the pages and inextinguishable. The bridge between madness and regularity; between man and woman.
Later in the night, I should need the feather for sustenance. My shadow hugging the walls of side-streets, looking nonchalant as the policecars Döpplered up and down beside me in the early hours.
Two cats, one black and one ginger, retreating at the gunshots my feet made. Blowing kisses - come here, beautiful. I won't hurt you, but the serpentine cats were eaten by the darkness.
Drinkers disgorged by the bars, shovelled out onto the hot roads. Are you from around here? What a fucking shit night out this is, eh, pal, and stumbling away when I said I hadn't a clue where a better time could be had.
Drinkers teeming out of doors, introduced to their own cut-off, senseless monologue. I had not had a drop, and yet I believed that the fruits of my own lunacy had developed legs and could be found somewhere in one of those bars.
Earlier, I saw a woman with a bleeding arm in the station, having tried to kill herself with a broken bottle. She dripped all over Beckett but not Lorca, and I had to cancel the ambulance when she ran away from me, screaming: ME FUCKIN' ARMS! TELL THEM FUCKIN' BASTARDS!
I told the policewoman - you need to get her, or she'll bleed to death. They caught her and pinned her up against the wall, wrapping the slashed limb with a purple bandage. She was still screaming. She cuts her fucking arms all the cunting time because she's ready to fucking die. I'm 29.
Later, I was upset with the woman about whom there remains more to be said. But as the night ate the serpentine cats, it emitted her and I was mollified. We hugged underneath a streetlight, and I apologised for losing my temper.
The true madman, then, regards the byproducts of his sickness as inscrutably normal. Less severe cases accept that their intense visions and thoughts are, whilst agonisingly real, nevertheless just the unfortunate consequence of a particular condition.
It was with these sorts of ideas preavalent that I caught a late train into the city on Friday night, for the purpose of meeting a woman about whom there remains much to be said.
Your author has long held aloft the primacy of the scientific method as far as differentiating between competing ideas; and of course long ago jettisoned religion. Yet the imprint of belief and irrationality remains, not far from the surface, and needs little excuse to rise through the pores.
It so happens that I mentioned feathers to the woman about whom there remains much to be said. I mentioned them to her, and therefore the feather, for the two of us, became a symbol, a directional arrow pointing into the future.
On Friday night, then, I was waiting for the late train, the 9:49pm service. It had been a last-minute decision to meet at all, and I couldn't be sure that she would go through with it; and even if she did I'd no idea where she'd be.
Pacing the platform, I needed a message from my own insanity, dropped into the arena in which I live. I required a symbol which connected the two - and, of course, there was a feather at my feet as I looked down.
I put it in between the pages of the book I was reading to kill the time. Little white flame that it is, licking the pages and inextinguishable. The bridge between madness and regularity; between man and woman.
Later in the night, I should need the feather for sustenance. My shadow hugging the walls of side-streets, looking nonchalant as the policecars Döpplered up and down beside me in the early hours.
Two cats, one black and one ginger, retreating at the gunshots my feet made. Blowing kisses - come here, beautiful. I won't hurt you, but the serpentine cats were eaten by the darkness.
Drinkers disgorged by the bars, shovelled out onto the hot roads. Are you from around here? What a fucking shit night out this is, eh, pal, and stumbling away when I said I hadn't a clue where a better time could be had.
Drinkers teeming out of doors, introduced to their own cut-off, senseless monologue. I had not had a drop, and yet I believed that the fruits of my own lunacy had developed legs and could be found somewhere in one of those bars.
Earlier, I saw a woman with a bleeding arm in the station, having tried to kill herself with a broken bottle. She dripped all over Beckett but not Lorca, and I had to cancel the ambulance when she ran away from me, screaming: ME FUCKIN' ARMS! TELL THEM FUCKIN' BASTARDS!
I told the policewoman - you need to get her, or she'll bleed to death. They caught her and pinned her up against the wall, wrapping the slashed limb with a purple bandage. She was still screaming. She cuts her fucking arms all the cunting time because she's ready to fucking die. I'm 29.
Later, I was upset with the woman about whom there remains more to be said. But as the night ate the serpentine cats, it emitted her and I was mollified. We hugged underneath a streetlight, and I apologised for losing my temper.
Monday, 19 July 2010
Pornography.
The radio coverage of Raoul Moat's last moments made me realised that we are, in general, more interested in the outcome of events than the processes by which those outcomes are reached.
I've come away from football matches uninterested in how well the team played - whether they won or lost was my only concern. When I got an infection in my finger, I didn't concern myself with the medical properties of the antibiotics prescribed. As long as they worked, I could carry on in ignorance.
It's analogous to the western view of sex; to generate an orgasm in any way possible. There is an initial state, and there is a goal state, and the route betwixt the two is quite frankly for the birds.
So it was on the night Raoul Moat died. The radio presenters had decided their preferred goal state was for Moat's life to be ended, and agitated for this possibility as often as possible. Audible pornography - give us the money shot, complete with its final, corroborating scream, and then we'll return to the conventional news cycle.
Again, what follows are more-or-less verbatim fragments of BBC Radio Five Live's handling of Moat's final hours - with the excitement building as the orgasm neared:
No matter how, Moat must die. No matter how, I must give you an orgasm. No matter how, the team must win. The age of the internet and rolling news has reduced the world to a starting-point and an endpoint, in which we take pleasure or feel pain. Everything else is too complicated, or boring, and we feel free to overlook, pornographers that we are.
I've come away from football matches uninterested in how well the team played - whether they won or lost was my only concern. When I got an infection in my finger, I didn't concern myself with the medical properties of the antibiotics prescribed. As long as they worked, I could carry on in ignorance.
It's analogous to the western view of sex; to generate an orgasm in any way possible. There is an initial state, and there is a goal state, and the route betwixt the two is quite frankly for the birds.
So it was on the night Raoul Moat died. The radio presenters had decided their preferred goal state was for Moat's life to be ended, and agitated for this possibility as often as possible. Audible pornography - give us the money shot, complete with its final, corroborating scream, and then we'll return to the conventional news cycle.
Again, what follows are more-or-less verbatim fragments of BBC Radio Five Live's handling of Moat's final hours - with the excitement building as the orgasm neared:
- Some people are laughing and drinking in a pub. We've had a wedding in the village and I don't think the residents wanted that to dampen their mood.
- A.....a.... bullet? If he did become suicidal, if he advanced on police lines, they may then be forced to use lethal force against him because they can't do anything else.
- They're going to precipitate him blowing 'is own 'ead off.
- There has been a shooting just now while your colleague was on air. He laid down and shot himself. - I'm looking at it now. I think there were two. Paramedics are leaning over the man and, er, there's a cordon of police around and that's about as much as i can see.
- He laid himself down and the shots rang out. I believe there were two shots.
- I believe they are loading a body onto a stretcher. There looks to be very little, if you like frenetic activity - possibly holding a drip in the air. But they are loading the stretcher into the back of the ambulance and I'm sure it'll be leaving the scene very very rapidly.
Then, at after one in the morning, the ejaculation.
No matter how, Moat must die. No matter how, I must give you an orgasm. No matter how, the team must win. The age of the internet and rolling news has reduced the world to a starting-point and an endpoint, in which we take pleasure or feel pain. Everything else is too complicated, or boring, and we feel free to overlook, pornographers that we are.
Saturday, 17 July 2010
Failure.
The inevitable question, again, from my mother, posed in an amused tone but asked so many times by now that I know it is no longer a joke: when are you going to settle down?
By implication, 'settling down,' in my mother's vernacular, means 'when are you going to present me with a grandchild?' and I am forced to announce, for the hundredth, the thousandth time, that it isn't likely to happen any time soon, if ever.
I am a failure in the eyes of my parents, and whenever I have time to consider it for any length of time, a failure is what I feel. Yet, as always, things are never so simple, if we set about establishing a chain of reasoning:
The Catholic predicate is a simple one - have as many children as possible, no matter what the consequences. The greater glory of God is all that matters, even as millions are riddled with AIDS for lack of contraception, even as abortion is still a sin as it robs God of yet another life.
This is the trap into which my unthinking - not thoughtless - mother fell, after decades of having it repeated.
It is better to be with anyone, so long as the equals sign after your sum is followed by children. Not a Dawkinisian imperative, but a Vatican one.
Marry, or not, whichever is more condusive to the creation of other, new lives, else you are a failure. Having seen through this theistic ruse, I have not failed, I am now aware. I have neither failed nor succeeded, and nor can I ever, because there is no external standard from which I can be judged either way.
By implication, 'settling down,' in my mother's vernacular, means 'when are you going to present me with a grandchild?' and I am forced to announce, for the hundredth, the thousandth time, that it isn't likely to happen any time soon, if ever.
I am a failure in the eyes of my parents, and whenever I have time to consider it for any length of time, a failure is what I feel. Yet, as always, things are never so simple, if we set about establishing a chain of reasoning:
- I am a failure
- to fail means that a goal or target must have been set, which I did not reach
- to veer away from this target is to veer away from the life which has been set for me
- to have a life which others expect you to live is tantamount to religion
- as someone who long ago rejected religion, I can think it through and conclude that I no longer need to feel as though I am a failure.
The Catholic predicate is a simple one - have as many children as possible, no matter what the consequences. The greater glory of God is all that matters, even as millions are riddled with AIDS for lack of contraception, even as abortion is still a sin as it robs God of yet another life.
This is the trap into which my unthinking - not thoughtless - mother fell, after decades of having it repeated.
It is better to be with anyone, so long as the equals sign after your sum is followed by children. Not a Dawkinisian imperative, but a Vatican one.
Marry, or not, whichever is more condusive to the creation of other, new lives, else you are a failure. Having seen through this theistic ruse, I have not failed, I am now aware. I have neither failed nor succeeded, and nor can I ever, because there is no external standard from which I can be judged either way.
Saturday, 10 July 2010
Language.
The intersection between so many things that I can't even begin to sort them out yet, and can only write in a manner little better than stream-of-consciousness.
The intersection between pornography and language, the intersection between the inflation of news and the idea of celebrity as distinct from news, the intersection between silence and noise for the sake of noise; filling the void where conversation stalls with a repetition of an already-known piece of information.
For most of the past week, the main news story in England has been about a man with a gun who managed to evade capture by police. As well as allegedly shooting dead his ex-girlfriend's new partner, Raoul Moat is also alleged to have shot the aforementioned ex-girlfriend, as well as injuring a policeman and robbing a fish-and-chip shop.
On Friday night, armed police found Moat's hiding place, and surrounded him. The details of exactly what happened next are unclear, but ultimately, after six hours or more, Moat was shot - it's not yet been established whether he committed suicide, or whether the police were responsible - and pronounced dead on arrival at hospital.
The language of war, reduced to the language of sports journalism.
Football's World Cup is the 21st century's world war, at least if you read the newspapers.
It takes no great observational power to realise the leak of warlike language into the arena of sport - the team with the greatest firepower or heaviest artillery are installed as pre-tournament favourites. Footballers rifle shots into the goal, or blast them wide, and the players who do so are sharpshooters or hitmen, or even assassins, but always deadly.
Of course we know by now that being eliminated from the competition is a tragedy and a disaster for a nation - the war is lost, and this particularly applies whenever England play Germany.
The German national football team are the remnants of the Second World War, according to some members of the British Press - references to the Hun, and to Fritz, are not uncommon in the tabloids, and the Daily Mirror took this to its natural conclusion before the Euro '96 semi-final between the two countries.
It hardly needs mentioning that this trend not only gives football an importance which it arguably does not deserve, but it also trivialises war.
The language of sports journalism, confused with the language of news.
Sports journalists uses the language they do because it insufflates otherwise dull cricket and football matches with a sense of occasion.
In some ways, sportswriters are failed news reporters - they don't get to write about general elections or murder cases or the death of royalty, and so they feel obliged to compensate by making their subject seem more connected to other, more important events, hence in part the dramatic language employed.
So much for sportswriters, who ham up their disconnect world like actors. What excuse do news reporters have for over-dramatising their subject, for taking the events which (genuinely) affect people's lives, and turning them into theatre?
Some examples of the terminology used on BBC Radio on Friday night, as the presenter waited for developments between the police and Moat. They'd not be out of place on the back page of a tabloid before an England v Germany football match, such is their appeal to the emotions - the following are almost verbatim, but I'm not sure I got down every word as I sat at the computer. A series of 'experts' comprising former firearms officers and high-ranking ex-police, as well as eyewitnesses:
The language of war and sport and news superimposed over one another with no single one holding sway, and thus no way of discerning the trivial from the threatening, and the outcome of a tennis match from the decision to take another's man life, or permit him to live.
The intersection between pornography and language, the intersection between the inflation of news and the idea of celebrity as distinct from news, the intersection between silence and noise for the sake of noise; filling the void where conversation stalls with a repetition of an already-known piece of information.
For most of the past week, the main news story in England has been about a man with a gun who managed to evade capture by police. As well as allegedly shooting dead his ex-girlfriend's new partner, Raoul Moat is also alleged to have shot the aforementioned ex-girlfriend, as well as injuring a policeman and robbing a fish-and-chip shop.
On Friday night, armed police found Moat's hiding place, and surrounded him. The details of exactly what happened next are unclear, but ultimately, after six hours or more, Moat was shot - it's not yet been established whether he committed suicide, or whether the police were responsible - and pronounced dead on arrival at hospital.
The language of war, reduced to the language of sports journalism.
Football's World Cup is the 21st century's world war, at least if you read the newspapers.
It takes no great observational power to realise the leak of warlike language into the arena of sport - the team with the greatest firepower or heaviest artillery are installed as pre-tournament favourites. Footballers rifle shots into the goal, or blast them wide, and the players who do so are sharpshooters or hitmen, or even assassins, but always deadly.
Of course we know by now that being eliminated from the competition is a tragedy and a disaster for a nation - the war is lost, and this particularly applies whenever England play Germany.
The German national football team are the remnants of the Second World War, according to some members of the British Press - references to the Hun, and to Fritz, are not uncommon in the tabloids, and the Daily Mirror took this to its natural conclusion before the Euro '96 semi-final between the two countries.
It hardly needs mentioning that this trend not only gives football an importance which it arguably does not deserve, but it also trivialises war.
The language of sports journalism, confused with the language of news.
Sports journalists uses the language they do because it insufflates otherwise dull cricket and football matches with a sense of occasion.
In some ways, sportswriters are failed news reporters - they don't get to write about general elections or murder cases or the death of royalty, and so they feel obliged to compensate by making their subject seem more connected to other, more important events, hence in part the dramatic language employed.
So much for sportswriters, who ham up their disconnect world like actors. What excuse do news reporters have for over-dramatising their subject, for taking the events which (genuinely) affect people's lives, and turning them into theatre?
Some examples of the terminology used on BBC Radio on Friday night, as the presenter waited for developments between the police and Moat. They'd not be out of place on the back page of a tabloid before an England v Germany football match, such is their appeal to the emotions - the following are almost verbatim, but I'm not sure I got down every word as I sat at the computer. A series of 'experts' comprising former firearms officers and high-ranking ex-police, as well as eyewitnesses:
- the lethal range of a shotgun against someone with full body armour is very, very short.
- people are trying to get as good a view of the scene as they can to see how it ends. this could end at any moment.
- for the first time the police are in control of this manhunt. they had been chasing shadows, scanning the land, but now they've got him surrounded. there are only two ways this can end.
- he must be getting tired, fatigued - the same applies to the police officers, by the way. this should be resolved one way or the other pretty soon.
The language of war and sport and news superimposed over one another with no single one holding sway, and thus no way of discerning the trivial from the threatening, and the outcome of a tennis match from the decision to take another's man life, or permit him to live.
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