The Gargantuan Orange and Its Lessons

Where do you escape to when you feel stifled?

My mother would do her grocery shopping, after cleaning, at Albertsons. They were always open and always desolate but it had more to do with the time of night than that store’s particular popularity. I remember the waxy newspaper coupon pages that were left at the front of the shop. They always left your fingers dusted in ink as if it were compressed powder on the pages rather than dried liquid. They were an invitation with their slightly grayed out images of beef, soda cans and oranges that were larger than their images of washing liquid, as if they were the only store in the valley that had colossal fruit. Mutated exclusively for those that needed cashiers to tap on their registers the 4 number code that turned them affordable. First sign of wizardry. That’s when I realized, if you listened, those long tubular lights would speak to you with their faint hum. A whispering screech that amplified as you got closer to the dairy aisle. It was always undecipherable gibberish but something, nonetheless. There is meaning in everything.

I loved the kid sized shopping carts they had. Something that seems to exist only in my memory to the point I’m concerned of their existence altogether. A potential Mandala effect brewing in the amygdala. I remember my mom would let me trail around behind her with one as if I was doing the shopping for the both of us. Falling prey to playing adult. Occasionally I was bold enough to put things in the cart and hope they weren’t rejected by the time we reached the cashier. She’d try to transform the state of things like turning water into wine by convincing me Fig Newtons were candy bars or Flintstone gummy vitamins were a treat I had to be good for. I found that moving. The ability to change the importance of something by viewing it in a new light. Anything can become precious if given the opportunity to become so.

All these little run-down places became meccas in my memory. The Albertsons at 1 am or the taco truck on the corner of State Street, in the Sears parking lot, that was always open and always busy with it’s $1 tacos. Three de asada and three al pastor with a pineapple Jarritos to accompany it. We’d sit and eat it in the van and drive home with the smell of cilantro and lime on the surface of the leather. These spaces never seem to outlast memory. Albertsons closed years later and was replaced by a Walmart that did the same thing but with uniforms a brighter shade of blue and the Sears, with its subsequent parking lot, was torn down and remains in rubble waiting for a developer to come swoop it off its state of destitution.

These places remain with vibrancy in the back of my mind where I’ll go sightseeing in the middle of a zoom call or on an especially busy Overground ride. I’ll close my eyelids and allow my shoulders to shift their position from alert to relaxed as if sinking further within myself. Sometimes it takes these precious spaces, the kinds you pop back to with a short dive into the recesses of memory, to allow yourself peace. The intersection of memory and expression seems to be the only place we are allowed to stretch to the limits of ourselves. A rebellious act in direct opposition to the thin boundary that constitutes social acceptability. The Id overtakes the well educated Ego.

Being is often a messy endeavor. Unintentionally I can hurt you or others around me in the process of understanding myself. I can make an attempt not to by first divulging these fraying edges within myself. In the confines of my safe spaces, the hallways of mind and memory, there is no room left for accidental manipulation. No room for misunderstanding. Those memories or impermanent time-places find the knots within us and ease them out with hopeful and gentle direction. The discovery of peace and, in turn, of oneself is often found in the nuances of these memories. They’re silent and easily missed in the flurried rush of daytime. Life amounting to nothing more than a set of instructions and its convoluted steps. Slow all the way down. Visualize clearly these moments, moments that gave way to movement and in that movement you can enact your great escape.