milwaukee
You sat down to write this in a white T-shirt
you bought earlier.
(It isn't that big of a city, you think, because one time you ran into your friend twice in one day, a few hours apart.)
You went to the mall. You went to a bakery. You went to a used book store. There were millions of books in that store, more than you've ever seen in a used book store. On the third floor, a book about white T-shirts. Lots of pictures of navy men, and working class men of the twenties and thirties. National Geographics dating back to nineteen-fifteen. Sex magazines from the seventies. Banners hung on lamp posts proclaimed “Downtown Theater District.” There are only a few theaters here, at least that you can see, but it's Milwaukee, not New York.
(You've been thinking about moving to rural Asia since yesterday. Some place where they don't have these things, and don't know about them.)
Four apples, six bananas, and seven oranges for $2.86. At the bakery you spent $6.91 for a sandwich and an orange juice. T-shirts were two for $2 at one store; you bought them at two for $14.50. Maybe too much, but they were higher quality and will probably last a while.
A man with a long beard was standing on a street corner near the mall, next to his station wagon, which was painted both with quotes from The Bible and his own words about the dilapidation of spiritual America, and had a speaker mounted on top, playing a tape of the man himself reading some sacred texts, and you went to see what he was all about.
At the bakery, you read the book you bought earlier- in the mall, not the used book store- while you ate at a table near the window. You gave the girl a dollar tip the first time, but she didn't see you put it in the jar. The second time, when you went back to buy banana nut bread, which you later found out was pound cake, but just as good, you gave her the fifty cents change from the five you had given her.
When other people passed by the man with the station wagon, you could tell they were doing their best to avoid looking him in the eye. He was actually one of the most down-to-earth people you've met since you've been here. He gave you a little calendar with his phone number written on it, in case you ever wanted to get together.
Everyone likes to be proud of the things that are theirs. The place they work, the place they live, the stuff they own. In the mall there were advertisements in every store window telling you about great products that you need to have, and how cheap they were for being such great products. But cheap compared to what? Things that are more expensive? Well obviously. But there's more to it than that.
You went out with the sole purpose of buying white T-shirts, but you stumbled onto a book of poetry, too good to pass up, a sandwich because you got hungry, and a loaf of what you thought was banana bread because you got greedy.
The man on the corner said that even these college boys who were walking by, even people who are supposedly knowledgeable, don't know what is really important, and therefore their lives are in ruins. You agreed (with some of it), and thought about how you might call him sometime, and then went on to give in to all manner of temptations, and buy things you just didn't need. (There was a necklace too, made of hemp with beads on it, for $8, but you didn't feel like mentioning that before.)
A year ago you would've gotten angry with yourself, but you're better about that now, and you know that you're becoming a more spiritualistic person, rather than materialistic. Processes like this take time, and you're finally aware of that.
All in all, it was a quiet day, and the downtown is nice to look at, but you knew there was something more hidden beneath the manicured surfaces.
When you get home, still thinking of the bearded man who doesn't care what anyone thinks of him, you throw some more things away that you don't need, put some things aside to be sold, and take your drawings off the walls. Everything is a distraction for you right now. But what's a distraction for you might be a necessity for others. What would we do without book stores and bakeries? What would we do without department stores and jewelry stands? Maybe you haven't quite figured that out yet.
It doesn't make you sad to live here, because
you know that your situation is like a block of
clay, and you can mold it indefinitely until
you're as satisfied as can be, for the moment.
But still, pound cake?
~
2001