This New November

I constantly see this image and variations on it popping up around conversations about Occupy Wall Street. People seem to think that it discredits the idea of the movement and proves that the protesters are spoiled brats who only complain out of ignorance of how fortunate they truly are. While I would agree that most occupants of the first world need a major reality check and ought to learn to live with less, I don’t see how this has any bearing on the validity of Occupy Wall Street, whose proponents are seeking to narrow the gap between the elite and the impoverished. If anything, the condition of the poorest of the world’s people makes government supported wealth hoarding seem all the more outrageous, even downright evil. Moreover, the thinking behind the use of this picture is lazy and dangerous. The same logic would argue, “Be content that your parents only beat you. The neighbors MURDERED their children!” Am I the only one who thinks that violence is violence? That injustice is injustice? That greed is greed, whatever the magnitude? While it is true that wins for the 99 percent here in the United States will not directly aid those who suffer in Africa and elsewhere, they will be steps in the right direction, away from the hegemony of the rich and toward a world where the privilege of an at-least-adequate standard of living belongs to every last person willing to work for it.

Tsunami evacuation! Mom shouts outside the apartment to warn us: we’re going East to Peter’s, and that’s that.

I call my boss, hoping I’m not waking her. She’s miles inland, up since four.

We’re bagging what we’d least want washed away.

Hers: phone, Kindle, laptop, purse, headphones. Will I regret not taking the photo album? Everything looks different: value over weight and size. Sonicare. Let’s be practical. Forgot my great-great-great-grandmother’s ring.

His: phone, Zune, little hard drive, portfolio, wallet, headphones, the card I made him for Valentine’s Day.

We’re in the doorway, looking back.

We can’t take our house.

Mom’s calling. She calls it off.

What do you take with you?

For those of you who don’t know, I currently work in retail. Luckily, I do not work in a gigantic chain store, such as Forever 21, where behavior, dress, and music are regulated from afar… by radio program. At my place of work (let’s call it Cosines), we have a five-disc changer and five employees with generally good taste in music.

Today, a track came on that no one had yet played. It was Enjoy the Silence by Depeche Mode, and I was a-groovin’. Out of some strange mental disconnect, I didn’t realize who the artist was until my coworker said, “Have you ever listened to Depeche Mode in complete darkness? It’s cuh-razy!”

I was floored. I stammered, “Uh.. Yeah. Yeah, actually. A couple times.” Big understatement. Two years ago, it was a rare night when I didn’t do just that. I had had a deeply disturbing and damaging experience, and I listened to One Caress literally hundreds of times because, for some reason, it tapped my emotion. I used it cathartically. I turned off the lights. I shut the drapes. I turned up the volume on my headphones and just thought and cried. Eventually, I got over it as much as I could. However, the band, in all of its stereotypical eighties silliness, still holds considerable associative power over me.

Isn’t just a little weird when someone you barely know hits a vein of your life with such impossible blind accuracy that you could just… spatter them with your secrets?

Can you listen to these songs in the dark for me?

I apologize for the unedited nature of this.

 … that cyanide smells like sweet almonds? The next time you think you smell frangipane, stop inhaling immediately and check for hostiles in gas masks!

Several friends and I had come across a shopping cart while wandering around in town. We were taking turns pushing each other in it when I spotted an elderly woman standing on the far corner of the block on which we were walking. 

She wore sunglasses and held a full plastic shopping bag in each hand. She was talking to herself, and I occasionally heard her murmured words: “kids” and “bad,” most frequently. I believe she thought that we had stolen the cart or that we were simply being irresponsible by riding in it. 

As we passed her, she turned slowly to match our passage and quietly said, “I’m going to put a curse on all of you.” She then followed us for a few minutes before turning down an alley, from which she continued to watch us.

Her actions seemed to indicate that she had forgotten her destination and perhaps many other things. I speculated that she suffered some sort of dementia, but I was unsure whether to leave or to attempt to help her find her home. I was intimidated by memories of extremely stubborn Alzheimer’s patients, fictional and real, and my ambivalence soon allowed the group to push me from her in the cart.

he smells so strongly of alcohol and smoke

that other essential aromas are no longer detectable

human scents and sense do not restrict his entry

into conversations and doorways

he offers work and advice

clearly not in a position to give either

he winks and touches my ankle

his odors stay longer than he does

I think he stuck to me.

We began

with a sleepskate

into consciousness

pouring from parents

Then

we blundered in blusters

towards our own mobility until

we could crunch mysteries

beneath our feet

Then

we tried the tricycle

through puddles

trailing wet traces in the road

stirring legends

maps of our own scale

Then

we blew on fires

charring ants

scorching our fingers

blackening our first eggs

Then

we adventured into adulthood

and poured our own

children

from mysteries, puddles, and fires

I’m not really a big fan of the “we’re not animals” idea. Of course we’re animals. Our extraordinary ability to exploit and rule over other species does not make us special. Sure, we have uncommon mental faculties, but there are other areas in which different sorts of animals outstrip us completely, like in senses of vision and smell, in the generation of personal electrical fields, in the ability to sense magnetic fields, and probably in lots of other incredible things we haven’t even discovered. We also are no less brutal than any other species. Contrary to popular belief, there are lots of animals far more peaceable than homo sapiens.

Our animal-hood, of course, does not eliminate our humanistic responsibilities…* I just don’t think the distinction between animals and humans is a necessary or even a safe one to make. It, among other things, allows us to distance ourselves from the harm that we do to other living beings.

Am I wrong? You tell me.

*As in: ”Don’t do that. You’re not an animal.”

The phrase “Get a tumblr and follow me!” would have meant something very different a mere decade or two ago.