I’m being watched. And grateful for it. So grateful. There’s a story, possibly apocryphal, during the Purges, the reign of terror, under Stalin. At the height of the cult of personality, the terror was coupled with an intense cowering before and adulation of the immensity of it all. In particular of the Big Guy. At night couples, families would be walking through Red Square and they would see a lone light burning in the Kremlin. “Look,” they’d say in hushed whispers. “Stalin is working.”

Of course it might not have been adulation at all and instead standard issue Russian black humor.

Regardless. Beneath the heat of that gaze be it real or imagined, partial and human or that of a cool eyed whithering executioner, we’re reminded to get with the program.

It’s so important to get with the program.