I’m back to using my local Safeway grocery store. Since my last blog post the human feces near the bike rack has been cleaned up entirely. It doesn’t feel like a victory. Victories are decisive. This felt more like the end of a war—how I imagine a shell-shocked union soldier might have felt walking home after hearing the days-old news that Lee had surrendered at the Battle of Appomattox.
Okay, I’m being dramatic, but I felt a bit zombie-like walking back into the store after a month of boycotting, after numerous in-person and telephone discussions. After scrawling “CLEAN PLEASE” on the wall with sidewalk chalk and arrows pointing to the offending matter. After coming back and finding the message removed but not the remaining feces and scrawling another message “YUCK” with more arrows and this time circling the poop.
Finally it is gone.
I walked into the store and it seemed so peaceful, even majestic. It was a Saturday night at 7 o’clock so that might have helped. But the inside lights felt a bit unreal—or I should say, real, like they had borrowed something from the sun. People were neither friendly or un. They just were.
Two women at the bakery counter with their children looked at me approaching and one said to her complaining younger child, “Look, here comes a man that’s going to steal you and take you away. He’s coming for you.”
“I don’t want any children,” I said to her.
“See mom, that’s what they always say,” her older child said.
I smiled at them and went on shopping. My bike pannier was getting full with all the things I was buying. I hadn’t come prepared for a real shopping trip, but once I was in there I suddenly felt generous to Safeway even though most of the area around the bike rack was still generally filthy.
I half expected someone to come up to me and say I was banned from the store. I guess my picture wasn’t on a bulletin board in the back or, if it was, no one cared.
6 cans of Fancy Feast Pate
1 bag Kind Peanut Butter Granola
1 Jar of Pepperoncinis
½ gallon of Clover Organic Milk
Ben and Jerry’s Peanut Butter Half-baked frozen non-dairy dessert
2 everything bagels (Safeway made)
True Story sliced turkey
organic radishes – 1 bunch
organic bananas – bunch of 5
organic lacinato kale – 1 bunch
organic avocados (mesh bag of 4)
six-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
____$65.97
I’d really only come for the beer, but I was happy to have my local store back. Relieved, I guess, is a better word.
I’m not ready to tell you about any more battles. I’m battle weary. My life feels too battle-centric. There has to be a way to fight that doesn’t feel like fighting. Somebody teach me please!
I took a nap yesterday and dreamed I was sitting down in a chair, but fell the last four or five inches. The jolt of hitting the chair’s back and bottom woke me. I don’t know how that works—how letting go and then catching yourself in sleep can feel so real, but it did.
Along with the Safeway issue being resolved (at least until it happens again), I finished an afterschool enrichment class that was somewhat stressful. Then, yesterday, Jillian and I went to the top of Mt. Diablo. It’s the first time we’ve done that since we moved here almost four years ago. I don’t know why we waited so long. It’s an amazing place and California was mapped out based on the view from the top. Being up high like that took all my problems and feelings of self-importance and shrank them just like the houses, trees, roads, buildings, and bridges below.
Shell Shocked
The soldier walks past freshly dug graves, limbless veterans on crutches, others with gauze covering missing eyes. He walks along long dirt roads, over hills, noticing butterflies lifting and disappearing behind shrub. Quiet pushes its way into his brain. Gentle wafts of sun-heated air scented with honeysuckle paint the absurdity of violence across his frontal cortex and continue their brush strokes between the folds of grey matter. He knows the land and his feet guide him with very little thought.
Finally, after many miles, perhaps days on foot he arrives home and walks through the front door only to find the house empty, but otherwise preserved. He collapses into a chair. The reports of cannon and rifle are still inside him but he hears them as an observer, not a participant. He feels safe for the time being, but a hard wrap on the front door or someone nailing wood can instantly put him back in that place.
(For the people of Ukraine and Buffalo, NY — everyone anywhere in the world where people have to think about being shot.)
Spotty West Goes East 