Jodi Foster

I’ve been thinking of the drunken old good times while watching young people socializing online, constantly messaging in a dizzying pace, never looking around, certainly not bending over a Xerox machine. One hears junk talk about things they like or dislike, mostly about fashion, cars, and jewels, never about how we lived and what we were like, only about the glittering dystopian world of the present. It is a click-happy hell on Earth, with books now mere objects that fall down when one passes out. Once upon a time books gave us access to history, and we were allowed to become those we never dreamed of being. Clicking and texting back and forth is only good for giving masturbation a bad name.

But there’s still a way to get away from it all: cross-country skiing. I go late in the afternoon, after karate training or downhill skiing if the weather’s nice. I swish through Pushkin-like forests, watching dogs gamboling in deep powder. I like it when the dark falls ever so suddenly: From all-white to cobalt to black. There’s a sudden chill and lights begin to twinkle far away. Snow-dripped trees are the only guide, so I plow along until I reach the inn. There’s no one around: no mobile phones, no iPads, no nothing but silence. When future archeologists dig through the digital detritus of our long-gone so-called civilization, they’ll be delighted to find my remains, a homo erectus without a single digital contraption on his skeleton. At last I will be famous.