Alight, Drizzle

"I actually stepped into a tiny little patch of fresh air between the air-conditioned limousine and the air-conditioned hotel."

As Time Goes By - A Trip to Los Angeles

 

Someone landed on my old post about the question at the end of that 1960 Time Machine movie adaptation, which prompted me to verify the YouTube link still worked, which made me realize how rarely we see movie characters bundling up against the cold these days. I don't mean against superlative Snowpiercer-grade cold but just a character donning a hat and scarf against common winter chill and hudding inside his coat as Filby does there. It's not just a shift in tastes vis-a-vis hyper-realism in movies, as other mundane concerns like eating still occupy at least as much screen time as they did fifty years ago.

Office work and central air have deprived many of us luckier ones in the developed world of the cultural universality of daily life in an atmosphere, of having to casually factor the current weather into everything we do. Maybe that contributes to the appeal, over the past decade and more, of survival games where you can shiver for more than a few steps in a parking lot, where at least your virtual self can feel virtual natural sunlight and rain on virtual bare skin. The inimical slap of sleet against your forearm is written into our nerves' function every bit as much as the ache of a missing lover or the glow of sucrose melting in your mouth.

Of all the trendy attempts to reconnect with the natural world, from organic vegetables to exotic vacations, could we not simply encourage office workers to... shiver, once in a while, and let the wind muss their hair? Become more aware of the sweep of air and water around the mundane structures where you spend your every living moment, even if they are mere corroded steel and concrete cubes surrounded by grass monocultures slowly losing their fight against herbicides and pesticides. Instead of racing from house to car to work to car to store to car, take a few minutes to stretch your legs and let mother nature cop a feel.