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October 5, 2003

During the evening on September 11th of this year I stopped by Ralph's to pick up some quick groceries: yogurt, carots, fruit. I hadn't been in a particularly memorial mood, to be honest; I had spent the day keeping busy with daily grind routine and some freelance work; the year 2001, New York City, and all the events of that Tuesday morning felt pretty far away.

At the supermarket I found myself standing in front of a large pile nectarines, alongside a pleasant looking middle aged man wearing a Yarmulke. There was nobody else in the produce section. Silently, we squeezed and inspected the red-orange fruit (only $0.99 per lb!) acting generally oblivious to one another's presence. How absurd and pathetic is it that two people standing side by side doing the same thing don't take the time to exchange even a "hello"? Aren't we both human beings? Male human beings, even, who appreciate reasonably-priced juicy citrus? I though hard about it, for a minute or two. Hard enough that I didn't remember to take the time to actually say "hello" to the guy. And as if to turn the moment into some sort of post-modern zen koan, the grocery store sound-system started pumping out "Will you Marry Me Boy?" by Paula Abdul. With vocals. Just awful.

I stepped into the shorter of the two checkout lines, thinking, "Jesus, I haven't thought about this song in about 10 years." Suddenly the 22 year old chubby bearded guy in front of me turned about halfway around, and spoke aloud to no one in particular. "Is this Paula Abdul?" I muttered something about 12 years, and he started make observations about the nearby rack of Snow White DVDs. "About time Disney started putting out this stuff," he said. He rambled on annoyingly, and I suddenly remembered why people keep quiet at the supermarket. Then I felt guilty.

Later, sleepy, I visited a Netscape news site to find a rather harrowing combination of news items structured into one screen. I found a sad synchronicity in there, somewhere between the nectarines and the cheating wives.

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