Kitchen Sink Damas Part 1

Sometimes when I am in the grocery store I get vertigo.
No I don't have a balance disorder nor do I have labyrinthitis.
But sometimes the floor turns into warm taffy and tilts sideways. Things change colour and it feels like the shevles are closing in on me. I am sure I will be cut in half by the steel monoliths covered in granola bar boxes and powdered milk. Who buys powdered milk anyways?

My steps seem huge and over exaggerated. I clench my hands around the poled handle of my grocery cart, the one with the waggity wheel. I do feel like a zombie on most shopping experiences - that is unless I am on a motivational surge of premeditated consumeristic lust. You know the kind. Your head starts to go all buzzy and that selfish throb of power emanates from deep inside you. We all get off on the purchasing, even if we won't admit it.

The grocery store is not really that kind of place for me. I spend most of my time looking in other people's cart and wondering what they are going to make with that or how they could eat the shit they are buying. Or watching the fish swim around oblivious to their own doom. Wow potato chips are on sale for three bags for five dollars. Pork hocks are a dollar a pound - just what I always wanted, a big old bin of pig feet.

In a way the grocery store is it's own community. It is a holding tank for people in limbo - a form of cell. A place that holds time in contempt and dazzles you with colour.
Personally I don't really understand them. In a way they are like a micro-example of the super mall - I guess that is why some genius coined the phrase supermarket.

My favorite is seeing people fighting with each other and kids begging for shit. The repressed dramas running underneath the Muzak, right beside a three hundred pound case of freshly slaughtered animals.

Maybe it is the graveyard aspect that makes people uneasy and fog-eyed. The hidden noises of bones getting sawed up in the back room. The five hundred dead or sterile egg embryos screaming for their chance in life. Who knows. Who knows, but something just isn't right.

I am the truth. I am the light. I am the way. I am the ... umm ...
Seek out Thee and Yea shal be saved. Seek out Thee and Yea shal be blessed. Seek out Thee and Yea shal be sanctified unto Thee. And some sort of other shit like that.

For the next few minutes I have decided to start my own religion. And what better way to start one than to have yourself as the god itself. That way you can be in charge of everything and no matter what happens you can't be blamed because everyone will just take it as "God's will". So If I change the rain to urine and piss down on all of my loyal followers they will just look up and say oh well it's God's will. Cool huh? What better way is there to absolve yourself of all of your actions, do all kinds of rotten things, and get worshipped for it.

Now, now, now, don't start in to thinking that I am all resentful of my own secret God and this is a way for me to get back at the ass hole for dicking me around all day long. That's not the drill here. I have just decided for the next few minutes that I am going to be my very own God.
Remember when you were a kid and you tore the legs off of insects and piled rocks slowly onto catapillars until they burst? You were playing the man! No shit! When you kicked your dog or punched your little sister in the shoulder until her arm hung uselessly at her side. When you broke your friend's toys because you didn't have them yourself? When you beat up a kid at recess because you knew you could take him?

Every single time we do something wrong or selfish or maniacal - we are God. I know so many Gods. There are so so many walking the face of the earth. Shit man who needs to go to church - god just cut me off on the freeway!

So verily, verily I say unto thee - Behold I am the truth.

A letter from the Lot.

This is a photo of my daughter Bobbie Lang. She is three years old and just loves to spend time with her dog Billy at the lot. Bobby loves to play in the rocks so we make sure that she keeps her life vest on at all times. In fact we let her wear it each and every day of her life because we want to make sure she won't drown.

Bobby likes to stand around and watch things and when I snapped this photo she was watching mommy skin and gut a muskrat on one of the nearby rocks. Mommy loves her new buck-knife and she was very excited when I snared a muskrat by the shore. She keeps the knife sheathed and strapped to her calf, just above her boot.
The water is pretty cold now and Bobby Lang still refuses to wear pants. But you know how kids are these days. We used to be able to keep the other ones dressed but they always managed to drown long before they reached Bobby's age.

Yeah these days Bobby doesn't stray too far from the fire and when we can, we try to keep her in the sod hut tucked back in the cedar grove nice and far from the lake. Billy the dog does a pretty good job of keeping the mice out, but he digs up too much dirt trying to get each and every last one. Between this and the times that Bobby secretly pees in there the floor can get pretty muddy.

The muskrat looks a lot smaller without its skin and insides and I am going to try and make a mitt out of the hide for Bobby. Once the snow flies she's going to need more than just a life jacket to keep her warm and safe. But if I have anything to do with it our daughter won't be allowed to run around outside this winter with just a life jacket on, even if I have to skin the dog.

So that's about it for now. The wife is giving me the evil eye, she doesn't understand me doing all of this writing. She says it scares her. She says a man is supposed to be living the simple life and not to be spending to much time in his own head. She says that's what makes animals crazy. That they are trapped inside their own head and can't talk. She says that's the difference between us and them.