The Insanity of Being (Part II) Order and Disorder, or the Line

Geb and Irene are out of town and I decided to "celebrate" the first day of having the office to myself with a 2/$2 at McDonalds--so the line starts all the way back at the ranch, or better yet (2/$2 is a sausage mcmuffin) that bubble of pig gas in a pond in Virginia, but let's cut this down to size and say it starts when I am sucked through the door.

It is training day I guess because the line is at the door. Packed like sardines while the brown-shirted employees seem to move in slow motion, as though we are watching a blue screen with the speed adjusted very low. A nice looking but, you know, confused old woman is sort of standing in line and so I ask her, "Are you waiting." She responds, "You can go ahead. Well I am in line, but you go ahead." To which I say, "Are you sure?" in what I hope is my least threatening voice as through coaxing an animal out from under a car say, and wild-eyed now she says, "I need to go across the street," picks up her bag and leaves.

Next a solidly built black woman with straight, tight cornrows and a white t-shirt leaning against the counter and having a conversation with the air. I don't want to pay attention, but I can't tell if her conversation is a real conversation or if she's talking up the air and getting ready to burst out with something. So I kind of listen and, despite the fact she is speaking entirely to no one, I am able to tell without even hearing specific words that her speaking cadence, her tone I suppose is in a linear line, it is progressing in cadence with what is my general understanding of the passing of time in the world. So I realize, even though there is no visible technology or differentiation that this woman is just having a conversation with a person not visible (invisible) to me, not an invisible person, who I could suddenly become in her mind. And I realized that said something about order and disorder, how language is deconstructed (in the case of the paranoid old woman who had fled after a simple question) and reconstructed (in the case of the woman who could have been equally deconstructed but wasn't because she was talking through the air to some other person about about seven hundred dollars).

No sooner problem solved (and the line hasn't moved at all mind you, although I have progressed) than the line begins to fill behind me. She is a very energetic old woman with sunken cheeks from no teeth. She seems fine although she's digging determinedly through her bag a little manically, but oh well, that's pretty much par for the mcdonald's line, until the fat man arrives. I notice the fat man sort of peripherally, just a bit of protruding belly (by the now the line has advanced maybe one person but the employees are moving more and more slowly). Now the energetic lady says to the fat man (who has pushed close to her), "You know I'm here, Goddamn, I'm standing here in line," or something like she's going to take out of a few of his teeth and even though I don't really want to look at them, based on body fat alone I think I would take the old lady if it came to blows, so I turn my head and nod energetically as if to say she's right.

I'm standing facing straight ahead, staring at the menu wall and ruing my decision to help contribute to that bubble of pig gas in Virginia when the line starts to move. I step forward, and the old woman steps forward so that she's standing beside me. Now the girl behind the counter looks at us, and starts to take orders, and ugh, we both speak at once. As soon as my mouth moves I regret it, I should have just let the old lady cut in line in front of me, but she had yelled at the fat man and now she pushing in front of me, so I spoke, and we both spoke, and I felt bad. I realized afterward what I should have done was buy the old woman's coffee (she was only ordering a cup of coffee after all, not six pancake breakfasts), but anyway, the girl behind the counter helps us both and gives the old woman her coffee first (although the price has gone up and there was no way that old woman has enough).

Now the fat man steps forward, my order completed (and the staff now slid back into slow motion) I get to look at him. He's sunburned and as I could tell without even ever looking at his face or entire body, he's fat. But he looks over at me and smiles and says, "Sometimes its a jungle." And I smile and agree. He orders, the girl behind the counter finally brings my food ($2 worth of pig-product patty, cheese and "english" muffin) and smiles and I smile at her and I smile at the fat man who is smiling at me at me and I say, "Well you just have to keep smiling."

On the way out the little old woman is outside the door, climbing onto her BMX bike to head out to the beach or wherever she goes and she doesn't look at me and I walk by (now very late for work because this has taken like twenty minutes) and am gone.

Insanity of Being (Part I)

Last night, walking to the laundromat, we were slowed by a couple blocking the sidewalk. They looked like tourists dressed in sport gear, the man was talking and the woman interrupted, "I'm so sick of your playful banter, it's the same every time I start to say something, you interrupt and I'm tired of it," yada yada yada. The man protests, now indignant, and then says well I'm tired of you. They stop, we squeeze past, and the man marches off the opposite direction from his erstwhile companion complaining loudly about how sick of her he is. And they are gone from our lives forever.