Thursday, October 06, 2005

Here is how it will be.
When you are standing in the grocery store, unsure of what to grab for a supper you should have eaten at least an hour before, they will be out of the only Progre**o soup you can palate anymore.

And this feels especially harsh and final-strawlike because tonight, you walked there not only for the utilitarian purpose of soup procurement, but for the walk itself, and for the activity of taking soup-can from shelf and then walking to the produce aisle to get some salad fixings to go with it, because you know what should go in a salad. You know what should go in a salad that tonight you will eat without thinking about how it tastes or whether it’s pleasing to you or just filler, after you’ve killed another ten minutes piling into your purple bowl the trimmed spinach plus arugula plus strawberries plus sliced red bell pepper. You know that’s the salad for you, and you know this is the soup, so you can operate in autopilot, although that makes your thoughts go back to where you don’t want them. Into the Very Bad Recent Disappointment; that cliff all your friends recognized miles and miles before you did.

And then there’s no soup, at least not the right kind. And then what? Thirty varieties of mealy or lumpy or otherwise strangely-textured Wolf%ang Puck brand. Two hundred or so red and white striped Cam*bell’s. You are in a bad mood. A place where you feel like the absence of the soup (—just one goddamned can!) you wanted feels too cruel, like the injury that follows insult, but worse because you somehow deserve it. You had these ridiculous high hopes, and so now you feel self-punitive. In this way, the whole situation feels fitting, but still shocking, like God is telling you that you in fact only deserve watery chicken with stars. And you’re crouched, knees bent, in that soup-grabbing pose you meant only to be momentary, only now you can't move, 'cause there's this ocean of wind traveling at lightspeed through your mind.

But here’s what it is: when you are squatting there with that acrid lump in your throat, staring into the space where the Creamy Lentil should be, very much unable to move or make a single additional decision of any sort, the song playing will be "Dancing in the Moonlight."

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

What a sh!ithead. I'm sorry sweetie.

1:24 PM  

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