Personification

A poster in the break room holds a photograph of an employee I’ll never meet. He won the national service star competition. Beneath the picture of this smiling man, who could probably pass for our senior discount, a caption tells me that he personifies the ideals of the company. Personification. Yes, national grocery distribution outlet, what’s being personified are your ideals; the ideals which posses a more defined human identity than your workers, if we’re using the word in association with its meaning. Read correctly, I think couple associates would agree with the dismal outlook the store is projecting upon its employees. As much as I don’t trust the dictionary, there’s almost an Orwellian undertone to changing the meaning of a word. The act of personification is linguistically beautiful, projecting life onto not-life, but I feel this is another case of swapping authenticity for style. What’s lost when the gears shift?

Sometimes I’d like to stick a bucket under the leaking faucets meaning. Not only would I’d like to see what condensates on the outside of the pipes, but to learn just where the sprockets are loose. The leak exists only if there’s a flow. I’ll brew some coffee with the murky water.

Earlier this week, I took a ride down to the University of Rhode Island in hopes of gathering some more information about their graduate program. This probably would have been one of my more productive days if I had found the initiative to actually leave the car when I arrived. I sampled the commute to Kingston, a cozy farm town with Dunkin’ Donuts only a block from the campus. But this isn’t enough. If I’m serious about the pursuit of graduate studies, here or anywhere, I need to start communicating. I feel that my research into different programs involves more looking into what people are saying about their programs than actually looking into different schools themselves. I’m doing more eavesdropping than asking. It’s time to send some emails.

Why the fixation on URI’s Composition and Rhetoric program? This is a question I really need to be asking myself. A short answer is that it’s a moderately applicable field that sort of transcends the literature teacher option, which I do like. Maybe what appeals to me the most about composition and rhetoric is that they’re what I struggle with the most. Looking back at the essays I’ve written as an undergraduate, I can see a lot of sloppy patterns and more weaknesses than strengths. And considering the way I verbally communicate, I’m known to mumble incomplete phrases, ending just about every sentence with and, settling for incomplete thoughts. Maybe it’s another pursuit of self. Maybe that’s what a career is.

I don’t know what I’ll be doing with the rest of my life. I’m sure there will be words and meaning, maybe a cat or two.

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granny smith apples are okay I guess

The bathroom at store smells like granny smith apples. If there is one stable aspect of working here, it’s that the bathrooms will always smell like apples. One of my coworkers is utilizing one of the stalls. He’s telling me what he’s doing. I really don’t want to know he’s doing. But I can’t leave while I’m washing my hands. The soap even smells like apples. The mist from the diffusers not only clings to the surface of the black tiles and cardboard-thin walls, but somehow sinks in to everything, fading.

He asks me if I remember a time when he had long, black hair. I do. I ask him if he’s ever going to grow it back out again and dye it, because the blonde-going-on-gray is something I’m not used to from him. But he says no and explains to me that it’s too much maintenance. He continues on to tell me about his scalp. I don’t want to talk about his scalp, but he brought up an interesting point of beauty and I push the conversation a little more. Talking into the empty apple-scented room, I mention Darwinism, how hair maintenance equates to survival and survival ultimately equates to beauty. But he doesn’t want to hear about survival, especially not in the grocery store bathroom while we’re killing our lunch break, not even looking at each other. He just wants to talk about his scalp. Which is cool. At least we found some middle ground. Maybe this moment is something I could blog about later.

Blogging, as of right now, is the only writing that I’m currently sharing and exposing others too. I’m not in a workshop environment, I haven’t submitted anything serious in a while, and I don’t really pass around my stories (although, Captain Jack has been asking to see some work from me). So to give these little moments significance outside of myself, I turn to saving the anecdotes amongst my list of how many bananas the produce floor needs (which is always between two and four).

What do I blog about and why? Aside from obscurities, I can see three major topics that I subject any reader to. These include my employment at the grocery store, my role as a student enrolled in my current program, and major life issues articulated through the lens of either of the first two. I wonder if all of my writing consists of trying to settle internal conflicts through these pseudo-sociological roles.

When I’m writing a post, especially in the last few months, I try to consider things like merit, patterns, and focus. Earlier, I flipped through a folder I have on my computer’s desktop and looked at a bunch of unfinished blog posts. With my writing and most overlying issues in my life I tend to get overwhelmed with what I jump into and quit. Easily. I get apprehensive, and it’s not good for what Annie Dillard considers, ‘the flow.’ Polished writing will have its place. Maybe one of these days I’ll even finish this short story I started a month ago. Or maybe not. It’s not indifference, maybe it is a bit of me lacking discipline, but it’s more so me being okay with being the jeans-and-t-shirt-Andrew, the one who wrote blog posts before short stories and unfinished novels.

So as I sit here, drinking Guinness out of a New England Patriots mug that my uncle gave me as a birthday gift, I can look at this writer’s block and shrug. I can take a sip, pretending to be a Patriots fan, and give these patterns and moments of literary potential a mildly interested glance and say, “Whatev.”

I’m going to blog about stupid shit and enjoy it.

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Caught Between a Rock and the Potato Cart

At Hannaford, we used to carry some generic multi-department products called Hannaford Inspirations. These ranged from hotdog buns to processed deli meat. Customers seemed to dig them. I never went out of my way to try them. Now, what was once the Inspiration line has been replaced and changed into the My Essentials brand. To my knowledge, My Essentials is distributed by the same entity that originally carried the Inspiration. It’s the same product. However, now under a different name, it can be marketed by the Delhaize Group, which owns Hannaford, but also a handful of other chain stores. I used to have a keychain with their lion logo on it. My manager gave it to me. It almost felt significant. Without the Hannaford name on these products, they can now be carried by the other stores owned by Delhaize. A good business move, I guess.

What does Essential signify to the buyer that differs from Inspiration? Essential implies the necessity of the item. In most cases, I believe that we as customers have the cognitive strength to see the product beyond the word juxtaposed on a clean, white background. But I think marketing really considers trying to get a foot in the door of the relationship we have between our body and our mind. Both negotiate what is essential with what is possible. From what I understand in my studies of literary theory, language not only dictates reality, but embodies it. Consuming food is essential. Seeing a product with the word Essential on it might shake up the nodes in our brain and build an association. But across the store, from the hot ovens in the bakery to the cold walls of produce, nobody really cares in this wasteland of apathy.

I’m happy for the new product. Not enough to buy it, but it takes the word Inspiration out of my time spent on the floor. Inspiration is a dirty word. I don’t use it lightly. It’s used to charm and destroy. The act of inspiring is beautiful; when one is able to tap through our membranes of indifference, anxiety, and the warm prejudices we wear to truly motivate another. But I feel it’s become something different in language. A stencil. An example. A drawing that book that encourages the young to trace the lines they can see through the paper. And settle.

The department is shifting this week. We have an associate leaving, an associate joining, and customers trying to find the perfect bag of limes to go with their Memorial Day Coronas. Standing beside the mess of our potato cart, I see it all. We’re falling behind the rush. The banana shrine is running down faster than we can fill it.

Here at the store, my past follows me. This statement is generic. The past follows all of us at all times. It’s nothing new to write about. It’s a shadow cast by the stance we take in the light of the present; what we see and what we let ourselves see, it’s almost an art. Like shadow puppets. But here in a grocery store, an essential establishment, I see the faces of old friends, coaches, and teachers. Some are more welcoming than others.

Pricing up some 5lb bags of California White Potatoes, my old guidance councilor approaches me. Our eyes meet and she calls out to me. She moves in close, really close. It’s as if she’s expecting me to hug her. I stand awkwardly and I smile. What face should I be wearing?

“Hey!” I say in an attempt to find the right pitch. My voice is loud, indifferent, and comes out with a mumble. I sound like a jackass. This is the individual who found the program I’m currently enrolled in for me. You’d think I would be more appreciative.

She begins asking about my semester, stringing together bits and pieces that she’s heard from my siblings. She says that I have an excellent GPA. I don’t tell her that it dropped. Among a few other things, my mind is on potatoes. Not college.

“Very nice,” she says to me, trying to cut through my stuttered words. “We have two students enrolling in the fall semester there. Now that we’ve seen what your program can do—”

Two. What this program can do? I tell her that it’s expensive. I tell her that it’s not for everyone. I tell her that it’s a very different environment for each student. I’m doing just the opposite of what I should be doing. I’m trying to turn her off of to the college.

“Well,” she says. “All roads lead to the same goal.”

All roads? Same goal? All bluntly evokes a sense that there are more than one and for the sake of this ‘same goal’ it throws a cloak of safety over everybody and their lives. Like they all have merit or something. Like they’re all capable of attaining this ‘same goal.’ But what is the ‘same goal?’ How can we see it? If all roads are leading to it, then we should just look to where a few of these roads are leading. But leading is different from being followed. The word projects its binary opposite. Not mislead, but ignored. We can’t trust all examples if we know some travelers are deliberately going the wrong way. At what point can we trust any story? Maybe there’s signs or symptoms to the mislead life. Like the hives of deception, or anybody with bad knee can be diagnosed with the unenlightened path. I’m thinking way too much about this. I mention loans. I always do. It’s like an embarrassment I can be proud of.

“You can’t measure it all in time and numbers.” I hate this phrase as soon as it leaves her mouth, but I know I’ll be quoting it later.

I talk briefly about the idea of going for a Masters, or even a PhD, but my words are unsure, or maybe just afraid. I once sat in her office and told her I wanted to be a writer, despite what my academics told of me. I wish I retained that certainty. She rewinds the conversation, as if the anxiety and tension were just the bad parts of a movie. We talk about the two students coming into the humanities up in Vermont. We talk about how helpful it can be for some to have the smaller environment and what it can cultivate. And, as my eavesdropping coworkers huddle beside our green bean display, she says, “You’re an inspiration.”

I think I’m going to be sick.

We exchange some goodbyes and I pull my crooked produce cart back into the freezer. I shiver a little while I throw some boxes of summer squash on top. The conversation is resonating like sugar crystals melting into a hot cup of coffee. Reflecting is the only way to taste if you’ve used enough. I think I’ve been drinking it black lately because I don’t trust anybody but Dunkin’ Donuts employees to put the right amount of sugar in. Especially not myself. Okay, maybe I do have a few issues.

I pass one of my coworkers on my way back out to the floor. He’s trimming bottoms off of some Romaine Lettuce, and then leaving it in some water to prep. The cold water opens the pores for the greens. Through this method they retain a level of hydration a few times a day. But we have to shave bits of the vegetation’s heart off every time we do it. Sometimes one will get too small and we simply have to cull it away.

Back on the floor, I zigzag around customers. I’m not a people person, and it leaves me caught by the potatoes again, waiting for a few carriage-pushers to finish what they’re doing. A man with dark hair that falls down to his shoulders is finding the eggplants a bit too interesting. And he has every right to. When caught, I’m too quick to anger. Even if it is just internal, it’s still anger. A potato that’s rotten on the inside is still rotten. And just like that, looking into the russet potatoes, I embrace the consequences of the path I took and walk on to the squash. Or at least I try to. Another man cuts me off.

When the Red Sea of customers parts for me, I sneak my cart up against the wall. It’s not a parking spot. I can’t stay there forever. So I hurry a little. The cardboard of the boxes are covered in wax. They can’t be disposed of with the regular recyclable cardboard. In a tug, no different from any I’ve ever made in the past, my knuckle is caught on a staple. I feel the skin peel off. It’s cold. The first moment of every cut has a bitter w chill until it bleeds.

I ruin a single piece of summer squash with my blood. Only one. Seeing the plasma cling to the hard, yellow surface is a little disturbing. It’s bad news to spill blood by fresh vegetables. It’s bad news to bleed in front of people. Embarrassed, I try to hurry and clean up.

I reach with my bleeding hand for a roll of paper towels left above a nearby flower display; courtesy of our one-person floral department. I frequently knock over her flowers and spill water out onto the floor. To be fair, they buckets were in my way. I’m trying to wrap it so I can walk back to our prep-room and snag a Band-Aid. My old guidance councilor walks by again. She’s holding a circular tub of something that she probably snagged from the deli wall. It looks like blue cheese. I think I’m allergic to blue cheese. She notices me again and looks a little disturbed. She asks if I had a little accident. It happens, I say. She holds the cheese up and says that she forgot all about it and walks off into the otherworldly path of aisle one. Something like this would happen. This isn’t the first time that she’s seen me bleed.

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Postmodernism: A Defense of Self?

I was flipping through some old Facebook statuses last night to find a link I posted back into 2008. Was it worth the search? Absolutely not. Most of my old posts from 2008 and 2009 contained me complaining about my workload as a freshman with my undergraduate studies. I scoured over different Andrew Gormans complaining about how difficult writing a paper for my fiction class was. What did I gain from projecting these complaints? Were these messages to the world the biggest problem I could put forth? My workload now is a lot heavier, but I don’t find any desire to broadcast it. Maybe this is because the academic work flow has become part of my actual process. I think we only complain when the pattern is new, or maybe breaks. Regardless, my work ethic in itself isn’t much different. Assignments are still left for the last minute and I spend the majority of my time in the West lounge, slacking with friends. There was a status in particular that came about right after my freshman year ended. There for the world to see, I boldly stated that, “I think that postmodernism is my calling.”

It received no comments, but I can just picture how many sets of eyes were rolling at this undergrad’s attempt to be an intellectual or something. I’ve always been concerned about the authenticity in my interest surrounding the subversion of metanarratives or pinpointing the intrinsic worth of the words in which we play with. What if this is just another façade? What drives somebody into something like postmodern theory if it isn’t just a scholastic trinket that they can pin onto their identity? In my own defense of self, I think I need to connect the dots.

Like all great things in my life, it began with The Matrix. I think it started late in high school. I wasn’t an academic, but I do remember watching the first Matrix film every single night for an entire summer. You’d think I was obsessed or something. I fell asleep to the VHS tape playing out gunfights between Neo and the Agents. I memorized lines, discussed the plot with anybody who was willing to listen, but more importantly, I started to push to find the significance behind this testosterone-laced hero’s journey. It wasn’t until I was a freshman in my current undergrad program that I purchased a copy The Matrix: Revisited. This was a documentary pressed after the success of the first film which presented an extensive overview of the film process in its entirety. It was in one of these segments that I first heard Keanu Reeves discuss the books he had to read before he was even allowed to pick up the script. The Wachowski Brothers had the cast reading works like Evolutionary Psychology and a canon of other major psych works. Also, they were asked to read Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulations. I wrote these down into a notepad with no idea as to how much it would affect the way in which I lived the rest of my life. Baudrillard put to words things I could only dream of trying to articulate—signs referencing signs and the steady decay of associated meaning. While Baudrillard is catalogued more closely with post-structuralism, his work is what kick-started me into the works of other theorists like Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida. I won’t even try to argue that I comprehend everything they put forth on a graduate level, but I’ve been on a steady path to pursue their work.

But this is just connecting the dots between influences, right? To what end does it serve to dwell on the patterns of academic interest? Sometimes I get worried that the ideas in my writing and my life are just plucked from these other theorists and exhausted for my own creative process. It can make one feel like a thief. If one’s only an imitator than how do they step into the role of the artist? (I hate the word ‘artist.’)

Recently, I uncovered some of my own artwork from high school. It wasn’t stashed away to be hidden from the world, but when I’m in my parent’s house I seldom go doffing through the past. However, in what has now become my friend’s room, hiding behind an old desk was a painting I finished in one of my art classes. I lacked any artist talent, but I think because I fit the mold, the public school system easily placed me in art. For four years. While I lack the ability to paint even the most basic stick figures, I was somewhat proud of what I completed with here.

When I held it in my hand, I could see that I divided the painting up into two sections, one reflexive of the other. On the top half, I painted the dark silhouette of a scarecrow caught in a sunset. He stood perched in a field with crows overhead. When flipped, the bottom half of the painting depicted the famous biblical crucifixion scene. Jesus stood nailed to the cross with the two other men on top of the rocks. They stood against a gray afternoon sky in the same stance the scarecrow did. Two symbols. Juxtaposition. When I held the slopping painting I felt a mild reassurance. For some reason, maybe out of a desperate attempt at idiosyncrasy, I was relieved to understand that I had begun hunting for the meaning on my own.

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Robocop: Hiding ‘Self’ in Stories

A few nights ago, I had the luxury to fall asleep in front of a fireplace with a book. I lost my place, but it was probably the best sleep I had gotten in weeks. I woke up somewhere around 5 AM to find my father scurrying around the house. He told me that some of the higher-ups at work wanted him in later that morning, late to him being 7 AM. “Half the day’s over at that point,” he said, looking out to his van. At this point, he had already brushed it off, warmed it up, and turned it off to wait until it was late enough for him to leave. Living with him for twenty years now, I’ve been taught what it means to be an early riser, but I’ve also inherited his sleepless nights. While I may not always embrace the waking race with the sun (while his record is nearly flawless), that sliver of insomnia likes to creep. If the exhaustion wasn’t there and I were more productive, I’m sure that I’d embrace it.

He had spent a few hours the day before in the emergency room. His heart was giving him some trouble, but he planned on waiting out the blizzard before doing anything about it. My mother drove him, and while I was at work during their visit, I probably sent enough texts to be considered annoying, assuming the worst and probably adding pressure that he really didn’t need. Though nothing was inherently wrong, so they sent him home with a monitor. While there still aren’t any answers, he seemed pleased that there weren’t any bad ones.

When I made my way into the kitchen to brew some coffee, my dad tugged the neck of his shirt, showing me some patches and wires that were measuring his heartbeat. I saw three of them, each one twisting down his shirt onto a walkie-talkie mechanism that stores every heartbeat like faithful diary. I told him that he was in the process of becoming Robocop or Darth Vader, the next step being flashy headgear. He laughed and began telling me about his experience in the emergency room, recalling quirky, yet horrific details that brought the story to life.

My dad has always been somewhat of a good storyteller. I remember vividly him sharing the tales of his youth, tidbits of being pulled into fights with strangers wielding lead pipes. These stories encompass everything that he’s told me to avoid throughout my life. While the details are all there, it’s only the things that happen that he seems eager to pass on, never his own thoughts. Sometimes I want to stop him, and ask him how he felt about what happened. But when questioned, he’ll add a token emotion like fear or excitement.

I normally don’t give it much attention, but this story in particular I really wanted to stop him to ask, but I didn’t. The story doesn’t start with, “I just listened to this kid die.” No, he broke it down into pieces, telling me everything that happened from where it was necessary. He started in the middle of things, in media res, untrained and natural. He found himself separated from other patients by a curtain. The color isn’t important as much as the separation. On his left, he saw the feet of a family, gathered around their son in probably the worst place he could be spending his eighteenth birthday. To his right, he told me that somebody was being revived after flat-lining, unlike the woman to her right who’s heart didn’t kick back in. Including himself, this story had four patients, only two of them were alive when he left a few hours later. We don’t often wonder about how our hearts feel as they beat on unconsidered, but these anxieties must change in the emergency room.

Separated by the curtain, he heard more of the boy’s family come in. I don’t know which voice the information came from, but he had gotten involved with crystal meth. He described the kid’s father well, or at least his voice. The father told the doctor about how they were going to have fried fish for his birthday, and how he’d lost his other son to electric shock. Some of the details still haunt while I type this. I think it’s in the way he included their screams and tears, thrown at the kid’s body, saying that they warned him that this would happen. My father got really quiet after this part, before he describes his doctor walking in his curtain area and saying that it was a rough day for heart issues. I wanted to stop him to ask how he felt hearing somebody die. But that type of curiosity is too bold and borderline disturbing.

My dad had watched his father pass away a few months ago, and the way he described the scene prompted me to write about it immediately. This backfired because I only had the details to work with, details that weren’t my own. Sometimes what happened isn’t enough for story, at least not the way I wanted to write it. The only emotion he really gave me was that, ‘it was terrible.’ The description of the family behind the curtain was a lot like his recollection of his father’s house. I wanted, or maybe needed, to hear about how this feels and what it has done to him as a person. I want to know his grieving process the way he sees it, not the way I do. I’ve taken more than insomnia from him, and while I may not have the ability to command a story like he can, I think there’s some other links I’m overlooking, like trying to break a wall by looking too hard at another one.

Maybe I’m just being selfish with this whole bit. Sometimes I feel a personal drive to push these stories for the sake of communicating and understanding. I don’t accept that stories are told to pass the time. In a response to one of the criticisms of his plays, I once read a quote where Thornton Wilder said that, “Every novel for sale in a railroad station is the dreaming soul of the human race telling its story.” I don’t think this is only present in books, but I think ‘the dreaming soul’ is ever-present in these little stories I hear in the break room of Chris Luz’s plan to completely revamp The Wizard of Oz. It’s there when I’m listening to my father’s stories. It’s there, but it’s behind those walls. We’re telling our too much of our stories without us. I want to push and understand, but they’re kept hidden. We’re all hoarding ourselves away, some more then others. While it may be as small as denying Oz remake as anything but a byproduct of time. No, it’s too calculated, the individual is too invested. Understanding ourselves through the lens of our truths and our fictions is one of the few ways that we can grow.

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One of the Guys: The Life and Times of Socrates

I’m looking at the punch clock. I have ten minutes to wait until I’m allowed to clock in and begin my shift. I count to sixty, but I jumped through the numbers too fast. There are still ten minutes between me and the shift. The door to the dairy cooler is opening. A man about my height is pushing it open with his back; two large hearing aids are wedged in his ears. Despite them, he still doesn’t hear me when I try to exchange words with him in the break room. I back away, leaving him room to put the black milk crates below the punch clock. I feel the sharp breeze from the cooler, from him. Beneath his two jackets he’s wearing the same red shirt as me, and if he moves right I bet I could get a glimpse of it. Nine minutes remain before my shift begins. I’m not one to understand much about aesthetics, but the punch clock contains only dull shades of dull colors. I think this is what makes the rest of the back stand out—dirty concrete is softer on the eyes than an orange trying to pass for a shade of brown.

I push my numbers. I hear the beep. I turn to the right and begin walking down a long corridor. It’s crowded with merchandise, people from the grocery department, and as much holiday cheer as you could possibly find in a grocery store. The intercom interrupts my thoughts.

“…to the produce prep room.”

I didn’t catch the name, but our prep room is only twelve feet and a door away from me. Behind this door, my entire department is walking in through the front entrance. By the entire department, I mean five other people. John Smith motions for me to exit the way I came in, holding a Christmas card for me to sign. A few shifts ago, he had approached a few of us for money, so that we could pool in for a gift for the manager. The present consisted of a Jack Daniels fruit basket and a gift cart to the steakhouse, both of which seemed perfect for him.

After I sign it, we both walk back into the prep room. John is smiling but I wouldn’t expect to see him any other way. Jack, the artist that works in our department, had given him the nickname Colgate because of this. Jack also gave himself the nickname Captain, but I don’t think he ever told me why. Almost everyone who has worked with Jack has a nickname, to which he says it’s supposed to help us connect on a more personal level, to which Bob rolls his eyes and asks which psychedelic Jack is taking. Bob’s nickname is Richard, because we can’t call him Dick in front of customers.

We’re all standing in a circle, looking down at the floor. It’s another dirty shade of concrete with sprinkles of onion husks and bits of greens. It’ll more than likely be me sweeping it tonight. Our manager is telling us about how successful the year has been as we present him with hard liquor. In his speech, he’s handing us each a small red stocking with Dunkin Donuts gift card. Even though our department is small, he would have had to have invested about $150 for all of the cards.  The red stocking is about the size of my palm and smooth to the point that it’s annoying, but I know I’m going to treasure it for what it means.

“Despite being understaffed and having hours cut,” he says adamantly. “We’ve outdone all of our competitors this year. Now this includes the recession, Market Basket—“

“And the Super Wal*Mart,” Bob interrupts.

He jokes, saying that we should each take a swig of whisky before jumping out onto the produce floor. And we all laugh, knowing that at least two in the circle will actually have a few before leaving. Moments like this don’t happen in customer service—there are just too many people and too much indifference. I remember synching into an ‘us vs. them’ mentality when conversing with management. I may not have a nickname, but I don’t really feel like just a red shirt and nametag anymore. Though, should it matter whether we’re happy with our jobs or not? At the end of the week, I get the same paycheck as I would have if I completely disliked the work environment. Are the prep room friendships worth the energy? I think so.

The store floor is chaos, but we’re twiddling our thumbs in its face. If it’s not out on the floor, then we’re out of stock. There’s little loading to do, so we undertake small tasks to kill time. Three customers in a row ask me if we have any scallions in the back, I know that we don’t, but I walk back to check for each person, throwing on some fake sorrow that I couldn’t fulfill their request. This is another reason to love the holidays. Besides bringing boxes for the mountain, otherwise known as the banana display, the Captain and I are coming out with the same items on each of our carts, thus we overfill the shelves beyond the Hannaford 2-layer standard.

A woman yells for me from the organic nuts. By yelling, I mean she’s giving me a bitter look and screaming that our PLU machine is broken. I know this already. I pull a piece of scrap paper from my pocket. There’s writing on it, but I turn it over and write the PLU for the sliced almonds that she’s trying to buy. I explain that if she gives this four-digit number to the cashier, they’ll be able to weigh the product with the price and she walks away, only slightly understanding what I told her. In her hands is a piece of my day. I don’t journal in a healthy way—I collect little bits of information on scrap papers that get lodged into books or stored away in drawer full of, well, me. I watched her turn away with a piece of me in her hands. It might have only been something like describing the punch clock, but damn it, it was mine.

Back between the prep room and the cardboard bailer, the Captain and I are talking about education. He’s saying that one of the problems with the institution today is that we haven’t learned how to learn, we’ve learned how absorb. For the most part, I agree with him, adding my own personal discourse on things we’re not being taught. He stops for a moment as I lean on the prep room door. He’s holding the remains of a tomato box in the mouth of the bailer.

“I have the perfect nickname for you,” he says, letting the box hit the bottom. “Socrates.”

After a minute or so of telling him why I don’t agree with the things that Socrates believed about the nation-state, it hits me that the nature of the name is irrelevant, but the fact that I’ve earned one means that I’ve integrated with a group. No, not earned. You can’t earn an identity. It’s a means of understanding our reflection, or how we project it to others. Regardless, there’s still something there. I think about this as I’m wedging broccoli crowns onto the shelf, but the thought follows me from here to the lettuce, with which you can purchase to earn $5 off of the DVD of Eat Pray Love. Defining something like identity has to be active. The process can’t stop. If it does, we stop.

As I leave the store, the Captain tilts his hat at me and says, “Later, Socrates.” It sounds awkward and touching all at the same time. On the way back to my earth-destroying Blazer, I stop at Dunkin Donuts across the plaza. It’s a good night for coffee. It’s always a good night for coffee. The lady behind the counter doesn’t look too happy to see me. I ask her for French roast, but she hands me French vanilla, insisting that that it’s one in the same. It’s not. And it’s spiked with hemlock. I know it.

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Love Songs in the House of Wax

In the produce department everything is covered in a thin layer of wax. The training video assures me that it’s digestible and is at no harm to the customer. Before I left for Vermont, a man approached me while I was opening a box of cucumbers. He leaned over my cart to peek in the box; his yellow polo was absorbing a line of water that the freezer left behind. In a rude manner, he stuck his hand in the box and asked if these were any better than the junk we had on the shelf. Slightly alarmed that I would now have to remove all the cucumbers from the shelf, I hurried over to see if they were alright. I lifted and inspected a bunch of them, each was cold and green without anything inherently wrong. As I turned back to the cart only to see that the man had already scoured through the box, the wet line on his shirt had become a damp circle.

“I guess you have a bad load today, huh, Guy?” I hate being called ‘Guy.’

“What do you think is wrong with them?” I asked, pulling my cart away from him.

“They’re different, soft and… well they just feel too weird.”

The cucumbers delivered that morning had little to no waxing and came from a local farm. This is one of the rare cases where they’d be the healthier alternative than the organic choice, which we sell shrink-wrapped in their own separate section. I tried to explain this to him, but he immediately became defensive and told me that he knew what a cucumber should feel like. I had no option but to agree, because the customer is always right. I’m no authority on what a cucumber needs to feel like to it to be a true cucumber. But I do know the wax itself is a little slippery. I often drop them.

Coming back into this department, a lot of the items have shifted around, but everything has that same waxy gloss. The coolers are still maintained between thirty-eight and forty-one degrees. Fahrenheit. I bet the temperature never changes and we’re all just reading the thermometer differently when we do the two hour rotations. I know a few people are fond of 39s. The only difference is that they trust me to do the nightly inventory, and by trusting I mean that it’s more convenient for the department if the closer takes the responsibility.

Tonight, as I was closing with John Smith (not to be confused with John Doe), I heard a song on the radio that struck me. Every song up to this one was something in the Christmas canon, and I can’t remember how many times the disembodied voice told me that I know Dasher and Dancer, Prancer and Vixen. No, I really don’t, Guy. When I listen to music, I don’t pick up lyrics really well. They happen too fast, and I can’t really grasp the theme of a song without listening to it a few times over. I think the only reason that I was able to identify track is because I had heard it once before and some of the phrases pushed me to investigate it a little. The song is called Undisclosed Desires by the band Muse. Despite my attacks on love songs, I actually appreciate this as a statement on what we consider to be ‘love.’

My first encounter with this song was random. I was in the Berkshires, driving back up to school. I heard a loud, metal-on-metal noise that didn’t go away. On instinct, I pulled the car over to check the engine… and as I stepped out of the car I realized that the noise was actually a train passing beside me. Real smart, Guy. When I threw myself back into the driver’s seat, this song had started playing on the radio station. After returning back to the dorm, I forgot about the song until I needed something to procrastinate with—and what better than to lurk on Youtube? After listening to the lyrics in their entirety, my first reaction was no human being loves another like this. Though, I understand the song a little differently now.

What I found to be a little profound about the song is the distinct absence of the word love, with the exception of one becoming loveless. Before I turned to a more mainstream choice on the radio, I was listening to a branch of NPR, which cuts out halfway through the interstate. On the broadcast, somebody was actually discussing a book where they attacked the use of the word love and how it’s always a dry parody of something somebody said once, a gesture that we’re all trying to mimic. The song itself, while there is some wording that irks me, is more of a collection of gestures, responses, and awareness to the core of another individual. I think that if this is how we measured intimacy we’d be a much happier race. What bothers me about the love songs I’ve heard, and I understand that this is being typed from the fingers of a male that isn’t very cultured in popular music, is the abundance of that three word recitation sprinkled with a few metaphors.

When the song came on the radio at work, I dropped the Granny Smith that I was holding. It bounced, bruising immediately, so it was thrown in the cull box. The apple could have been somebody’s dinner, or it could have gone bad from shelf life. Either way, it now doesn’t have the chance. The first thought that snuck into my head was something I remembered reading when I was searching around for the song. Somebody had posted a remix of them singing the lyrics (to which I feel a little guilty that I hadn’t taken the time to watch). In the description, the singer said that every person is longing to hear something like this. I’m usually the first person to say that if love is all we have to live for, then we should end ourselves. But because we’re always analyzing and interpreting the relationships with those we’re both close and distant to, we must be looking for something. Unless we’re not autonomous beings and we only interpret to react, not understand. Unfortunately, I think we too often settle for the parody. This is probably why we don’t know what cucumbers feel like.

 

Love. The word itself is the wax hindering the definition. Only I don’t think the training videos want us to know this.

 

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Fruit Salad

A man with 93 years under his belt drove to the grocery store to quickly shake my hand because I’m back in town. I was taking the temperature of the fruit salad cooler (just in case it changed in the span of an hour) when I saw him stumble in, shaking off snow before noticing me. His name is Marcel, and despite his scrawny complexion, he’s got a lot of compassion tucked beneath the tan jacket. We’ve been exchanging letters back and forth after my grandfather’s funeral. Marcel is a dedicated member of the local parish, which entails him knowing my great aunt and uncle very personally. He often wrote recollections of the time spent with my great uncle at many operas, and then would continue to add his own personal critique of how a lot of the new musicals just aren’t for him.

I don’t know what made him eager to see me, and I’m not sure if we even talked for a full minute. The conversation consisted of him asking me why they gave me so much work this semester (I wrote too frequently about Lit courses), and how he’d been in the store earlier today to visit Bob who is just getting over a flu. Bob is a little closer to Marcel in age, only having a rough 20 years difference rather than my 70 year gap.

 

If the world were full of moments like this I think we’d write better books about it.

 

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Dueling at BK

It’s a different night and a different fast food establishment. Chris and I are visiting our friend Erin, who is taking orders on her little headset. Burger King’s dining area is closed, but she is letting us mingle around with our coffee. It was brewed with a hot chocolate packet, but I can’t really taste the difference. Chris is unloading nine packets of sugar into his cup. I’m criticizing how he’s diluting the crisp, bitter taste. The on-duty manager is fighting with her husband on the phone. Her face looks tired, and she gives me a look like she’s heard it all before. In her hand is a box cutter. It’s blue, but not like the ocean or another friendly shade. In her grip the blade is angry, and whenever she passes control of the conversation over to him, she slices through the pamphlets stacked neatly on the trays. Two people are still sitting in the back of the dining area. One waiting for her boyfriend’s shift to end and I think the other works here. But I’m not sure. I’m not really focused and I’m barely catching the tail end of everything that’s being said. I’m thinking of Vermont and wanting to cash in on some second chances.

I don’t want a second dice roll to change how things turned out, but I’m wondering if things would be easier now if I branched out when I should have. To my understanding, abusive relationships are more about somebody struggling with themselves rather than another individual. If I we’re struggling with ourselves, should we ever put that responsibility on another person?

Erin asks me to get her the trash from the men’s room. It’s not my job, but I figure it’s not the worst thing I’ve done to earn a cup of coffee. I don’t blame her for not wanting to be in there. Paper towels litter the floor, and I try not to wonder how they’ve gotten there or what’s on them. I come out with the bag in hand, holding it awkwardly away from my body. Erin and the manager tell me that they were considering cutting the power to the men’s room, which would have left me picking up the papers in the dark. I imagine this, me fumbling around in the dark, trying to feel for paper towels. Things never feel the same when you can’t see them. I correct her, saying that I had the power to leave the room if the lights were cut. I could leave any time I wished it.

I feel like I never left this battle with myself. In one sense, if either bit of me returns victorious from the pit, then I’ve won. If I’m right, then the heart of the issue is that there is conflict. But I think the problem is not the willingness to fight ourselves. It’s the fact that we’re dueling with the weapons that society is giving us. Barbie and Ken are fucking bombs in the human condition, and we only have ourselves to respond back with. We’d think this would be enough, right? I remember that I had one opportunity to show somebody how I’m stacking the cards against myself. I could have done this before I left, but I ran. I ran with the arrogance that because we need to solve our own problems, we should tuck them away from the rest of the world. I drove back to Mass, cashing the opportunity in to finish the drive back in daylight.

Chris and I are leaning on the rail. My coffee is gone and we’re getting ready to head back to my place and do something productive like watch Youtube videos that we’ll forget about in the morning. I look at the floor tiles. They’re all evenly placed against one another, but none of them are touching. I think what’s separating them is this cement-like glue, but I’m not a mason. Either way, I accept how I’m seeing it, and it looks like they’re never going to touch. Chris leans over to me, crosses his arms and prepares to say something.

“Um… Do you ever wonder what it’s like to be skinny?”

I want to scream my answer in his face, like we finally found some even plane of communication. I see him, though. He’s looking at the kid with dreadlocks, preparing the fries and onion rings. He’s slender, and it looks as if he can move freely without having to tax his breath. For a minute, it’s as if Chris and I are the same person, standing on the same time. I’m thinking about time spent in front of the mirror, and how the dorm’s mirrors are obnoxiously huge, showing us everything that we don’t want to see. With analysis, there is always the response.

“Yes, I do. Often.”

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I Found the Real World

The real world only exists at one in the morning. And it only happens in the McDonalds parking lot. If not, then you miss the vans pulling in and out of vacant parking spots.

It’s because at this point we can’t even see the flashy yellow ‘M’ concealed by the roof of my cousin’s car. All we have is the fog on the windows, with which I took the liberty in inscribing the symbol of Satan beside the phrase love yourself. I blow fog on the star, remembering that the last time I drew it on a chilled window, my school’s Registrar walked in, looking both confused and disinterested. But the real world isn’t there. I think I’m trying to mark one world too many.

It’s here because we arrived an hour too late. They’ve stopped carrying Big Macs at midnight, and we weren’t about to wait until 10. Otherwise, the three of us wouldn’t have been frustrated with the junk that we did leave the window with. Instead we settled for three number twos, its own meal but to us a parody of what we made the drive for.  At the end of the order, my cousin tacked on an order of nuggets, and this is how you know it’s the real world. Otherwise, would we have needed the twenty McNuggets?

It’s here because the three of us are having one of those awkward conversations the ancient philosophers call guy talk. I try to push the conversation away from my insecurities, asking vague questions like what they would do with two wishes. Nobody considers giving the wishes away, but we can’t think of things we would change about our lives without changing ourselves.

The real world isn’t me blogging at 11, my parent’s cat fighting arduously for room on my lap. It isn’t here because I have too many tabs open to see it. The semester’s grades are a distraction—little A’s without comment that will never know when I threw the towel in. But how could they? They’re the same sprite that Microsoft used as a spaceship for their Asteroids game. Nothing more.

In the real world we shouldn’t have an agenda for wishes, because they stop serving them at midnight.

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