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Smash
Ten miles away from me a man throws a small fluffy yellow hollow ball into the air and propels it across an open green with a precision strike from a carbon fiber frame enmeshed with cat gut.
This action is captured by the cameras on court and transmitted within a few seconds through a network of wires and transmitted signals to the television across the office where I spy two white blobs moving like a Vaseline-smeared Pong machine as they play out the point. I cannot tell who is on top and who is below, like watching porn in the dark.
The action is seen by the commentators in a booth overlooking the court and they alternate between criticism and excitement through a complex equation of jealousy, appreciation and admiration and their words are encoded and uploaded, arriving in my ears as I listen to the online coverage some seven or eight seconds after the action took place.
The action is automatically tallied up when the play concludes and the points have been awarded to whichever player played the best play. The scoreboard updates and triggers an automatic revision of the online scoreboard seconds after the online commentators have announced the result, well after the television has shown the play and wholely a minute too late and a dollar short.
I sit and ponder the stories of Japanese soldiers on remote islands in Micronesia, still fighting the second world war years after Japan's surrender and wonder if they realise Henman has lost again.
Jun.30.2004