I’m accidentally in Tesco on a Sunday morning, I am in Starbucks waiting for my car to be valeted and they have called me Alice. I realise it may have been noisy when they asked for my name, but nevertheless I am liking this new nomenclature since I am more than ready to go down any available Rabbit Hole.
I am typing into the notes on my phone, a notebook would arouse suspicion and the correct assumption that I am spying on people as a leisure pursuit…even though I am, rather, simply observing. Collecting data, with an eye on creation.
I’ve got a flat white with almond milk, fruit toast with butter and a yoghurt thing in a plastic tub with a packet of seeds you sprinkle in it, which you then eat with a wooden spoon. I’m a lapsed vegan, in between the ways. I’m trying to be healthy and not always succeeding.
A man walks past holding a big TV under one arm, and a ready-made sandwich in the other hand - and he is tearing the packaging open with his teeth while continuing to walk…to the car presumably with said telly.
A baby cries incoherently and the adult tells them to shhhhh. The cries become more insistent.
Signs say:
Scan as you shop.
Card only.
Basket self-service.
Wild-farmed is here.
A couple sit facing each other, together and alone, eyes down at their phones.
Two women talk - loud fragments - I said howay man yer the cow’s tail….she doesn’t know him from Adam…aye right, av bin binge watchin Line of Duty which got rave reviews…when in Rome an aal that.
Her friend just listens, the quiet one.
Some have cleverly perfected the art of wheeling the trolley with their forearms leaving both hands free to operate the phone and simultaneously keep aware of their general forward-moving direction.
The security guard hovers by the donation boxes.
Do we know how lonely, how distracted, how fragmented we have become?
I scan the scene for more vignettes. Art resists death. It is a form of resistance.
My mind meanders.
Our memories are made of strokes of paint and light, where form and formlessness merge.
Art is our entry into the sublime where we can cease to be operatives of production, instead we are making the world anew.
I one-finger type a poem.
Today I have no desire
to fill my head,
instead I’ll be a Swift
an aerodynamic miracle
enjoying the warm air
at one with spaces
of flight, of height
allow myself to drift
open-beaked or
course-correct on currents
to my nest in the eaves,
free from thought
of how this might be.
I fill some time hand-shopping, stroking the cheap mass-made clothes, lines of nylon bikini tops in The Sale all hopelessly tangled up and virtually identical save for their cup size, fondling the stationery, and briefly consider buying a whiteboard but question if I really need it, running my finger across numerous china mugs in different designs and fake plants for bathrooms…until after an hour of this I arouse the suspicion of the woman in electricals as I lazily eye the array of alarm clocks. She gazes at me rather too long.
I am still wearing sunglasses and I have no shopping basket. And I am not buying!
Feeling like an alien I slip away swiftly to the outside world to find the man originally from Somalia, cheerfully polishing my car. He seems to relish it. I thank him. I feel uncomfortable about the ultimate pointlessness if it while also being gratefully relieved.
A light rain begins to fall.
I was there with you the whole time!
beauty in the mundane, wonderfully written ❤️