NEEDLING

My first full day here at the house. Cleaned the little studio behind Janet and Ken’s house this morning where I’ve been living most of the last month. Brought the remaining three boxes, two trash bags full of letters and postcards from my time in Paris, and the one luggage left, the heaviest one I had kept for last. Now that it’s all out, it’s hard to believe that I don’t have anything else to show for my seven years in France. Back in the same room, my ex-bedroom that I wanted to make into my new bedroom because it’s the smaller of the two rooms, and make the other, the bigger one into my office space but the big-ass desk Brian gave me wouldn’t fit through the doorframe without taking the door off the hinges and this room already had the door off, so I put the desk in here out of laziness, keeping the larger of the two room to eventually become my bedroom. The futon Brian and Tracie loaned me is in here too, as well as the insides of my bags that I emptied on the floors. The rest of the house is empty. Maybe I’ll just live in this room and barely use the kitchen. I bought one hundred bucks worth of food this afternoon. Didn’t even put a dent in the emptiness of my large refrigerator. The freezer section is as big if not larger than my whole fridge I had in Paris. It’s desolating to have an empty refrigerator. I’ll fill it up with beers. Bought all kinds of veggies, potatoes, garlic, tomatoes, and various others fresh food products. The spice section at the supermarket is horrible. They’ve got all kinds of powdered mixtures, anything you want as far as hot bbq seasoning, Tex-Mex mixes, grill spices, garlic and lemon seasoning salts, and what have you. But as far as whole cumin for example, nothing. Various mixes involving crushed or powdered cumin, but whole cumin, totally inexistent. The same goes for other spices. I bought salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and ground cinnamon. I’ll have to take a trip to the several oriental shops and small supermarkets I’ve seen around the shopping centers... all those hundred and hundreds of shopping centers littering this city along its highways, freeways, loops, and avenues. Or I’ll have to find out where the Indian, Arab, and otherwise Eastern populations do their shopping. Probably those very same Asian supermarkets. I bought a frying pan and roasting dish. I almost bought a vegetable steamer, but it cost forty bucks, and I’d much rather have some bamboo steamers. Note: to look for when in the Chinese market. Last week I went to the “fancy” supermarket a little further down. I was craving fish. Every freaking fish displayed was filleted, cleaned, skinned, and very expensive. Not a spot of blood or fish guts. Smelled like… the plastic casing they were displayed in. I didn’t have the nerve to ask them if they couldn’t go back there behind the protective wall, the flapping doors, the “no Trespassing” signs, for some whole sardines, or some whole mackerels, or some whole trout… (none of which were for sale anyway) or anything else really where I could look into the dead fish eyes and see if I wanted to buy it, to take it home and cut its stomach open to take out the guts, clean the insides out with fresh water, the whole time taking the scents in, looking forward to eating its flesh with a little butter and a little lemon. I bought a quarter pound of boloney from the deli instead, the kid slicing it for me swearing to me with a fake Italian accent that it was imported from Bologna or whatever the name of that Italian city is. Maybe the Chinese markets sell fresh fish too, as well as spices outside of chili powder, hot or mild. I should be so lucky. And I should find the Indian shops too. When I was walking through that fancy supermarket I got really depressed, and the kid who sliced the cold meat for me kept wanting to talk to me, cheer me up. He gave me a whole slice of the stuff for me to taste and asked me a couple times if everything was alright. Sure, thank you, I said. Then when I got to the cash register, the cashier girl asked me if that was good beer, I’d grabbed a six pack of Honey Brown, she’d never tried it before, and she gave me a big smile. Sure, it’s fine I guess, it’s drinkable. That’s it, just drinkable? It’s just a beer, you know, nothing special. She gave me a hurt look like what, am I not good enough for you to talk to? I felt even worse. I didn’t want to talk to anybody, and couldn’t anybody have some good smelly fish, some food preferably not vacuumed packed… what happened to the butchers, why are they hiding, shouldn’t I be able to see the goats and the pigs hanging on hooks? Why is it I’m inside a food emporium bigger than a freaking village and it smells like lemon spice cleaners instead of the multitude of the foods displayed? I had gone in there to cheer me up, and walked out feeling like a dead log sitting in my car in the middle of yet another parking lot with hundreds of cars and the heat steaming up from the cement. No faces to look at. No young mothers pushing their children or tugging at them or carrying newborns wrapped around their breasts. No hustle and bustle, no screaming or arguing in various languages, no old men hanging out in cafes sipping their black coffees or their beers or their glasses of red wine. Nothing to look at except cars parked or parking or going back to the road. No windows to look through, just empty walls with no windows. Nothing to smell except clean floors and clean people. Nothing to listen to except clean elevator musac and the constant purring of the four lane road in front of the shopping center... In a way, it’s my fault, I could have stopped feeling sorry for myself for a second and started up a conversation with that fake accented cold-cut cutting musing boy. I could have flirted with the cashier girl. She was kind of cute with those tattoos all along her arms, and her hair dyed black. She must have been around my age, and still looking more or less like a teenager. Instead of centering on the parking lot, the ugly cars, and the heat, I could have gone to the earthy café specializing in grass drinks and smart drinks, or whatever they call them… yadiyadiyada… blablabla...