Running through Washington Park, I was swimming though a sea of pink. I passed a group of women and one of them was smoking a cigarette. I didn’t have enough nerve to speak my mind to her about smoking during a Susan G Komen breast cancer Race for the Cure. Perhaps someone else did… Instead though, I told the “Team Granny” survivor congratulations.
I also walked to this amazing neighborhood co-op grocery store. It had the biggest bulk item section I’d ever seen in a locally owned shop and I got brown rice and yellow lentils and granola and dates and chili lime peanuts and peanut butter and also carrots and tortilla chips, all for about $15. The co-op offers so much to its customers, but it doesn’t offer me the crap candy that I eat pretty much on a daily basis, so I walked literally right next door to the dollar store. But the two stores couldn’t have been farther away from one another; practically polar opposites with regard to commodities and customers, yet they shared back walls.
The words to this poem began stirring in my head on the walk back home…
PSA 10/17/2011
Here’s a little advice, from little old me
I’m no one special really
Just one of those apples who happen to fall not too far from the family tree
Faults of my own, faulty wires, a lose screw of one or two
Sticking out like sore thumbs, taking it as it comes
Obsessively compulsing, mind always pulsing, until everything is in its exact place
Now for the tid-bit
Kindly turn the music down, adjust your seats, prepare a new drink and put out the smoke
Excuse me, madam? The smoke?
I’ll forgive you once because perhaps you haven’t got a single clue
About what cigarette smoke can do to my little babe, and even worse, to you
But darling, during this survivor’s walk, you’ve got no place or room to talk
Or we’ll just continue to stop and gawk
And I’m so, so sorry that breast cancer took your best friend’s life
It too has run amok among my own mother’s milk ducts
Now, time for a quick intermission break
Go ahead and choose a snack
But I’d think twice about grabbing that
We learn through practice, must practice what we preach and in turn, preach what we learn
So for cake’s sake and for your salud, let’s get lost in this labyrinth and pick some fruit
Fresh fruit, organic apples, locally grown greens
You’ll find it all here at the Cut Out The Crap community food co-op
You know it, don’t you? It’s right around the corner from the dollar store
Oh, the food here you can’t afford?
You’ll need to leave and shop next door?
Because there you can purchase so much more?
I’m so sorry, my sweet, sweet dear
It makes my blood boil too and it’s just not right
That the 1% can afford to eat so great
And that the 99% will eat so poor
Later, I found myself in another alternate universe, upon landing in Burlington, Vermont. A unique type of tea house, called Dobra (there are only four in the US, including Madison, Burlington, Portland, ME and Ashville), that originated in the Czech Republic. The tea house led to listening to Arabic chanting, which lead to our couch surfing friend telling me about her art hanging at a coffee shop, a quick walk away, which led to my stepping into the place and immediately hearing the words to a song from an artist whose name I didn’t recognize, but had to learn right then that very instant. Because the lyrics referenced flying into Senegal and having crazy lucid dreams from the malaria medication. Which I’ve experienced. So I walked straight to the front counter and asked the barista, who told me it was Elephant Revival. Apparently, two of the band members are from Talequaa, Oklahoma, which is really bizarre because the very next moment, I turn around and see my friend Brooke from Oklahoma, sitting down with a friend, sipping coffee.
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