There is much that ought to be accounted for before this but this is the obstruction for now that must be traversed or tackled…if at all tamed. It's funny because it shouldn't be this huge beast of a thing, but it is, and maybe if I write of it, I can cage it in these lines, if only due to my own sense of shame…and at long last, it is this: an insatiable capitalist hunger that is starving me. And I know how that sounds, how it makes me sound: like some doctrinaire dictator over desire…but I swear this is such a thing for me. Such a sick solid thing. I keep making myself walk through this mall--I don't have my bike now, so I always go through it, force myself through for the warmth it offers when really its all the color that I'm after and then of course, well now of course there are these huge glaring signs SALE SALE SALE and its true that everything's cheaper than ever and I keep coming across things I like, and most of them reasonable things--an off-white sweater dress or a black cardigan--but then I tell myself I have those very things in different incarnations but I still want these new things and then of course I add it all up and everything I want is everything I already have and so I think that I should be contented by this…but I never am so I start to get after stranger creatures that haven't already made a home in the forest of my closet--patent leather yellow pumps--but of course I know I would never or hardly ever wear those. Stilts are stunts I'm growing increasingly unaccustomed to. But I still put myself through this huge ordeal, waste hours cultivating a want and then killing it. It's all becoming a lot like Gandhi's explorations with truth. It's like when he would lay in bed with a dozen naked women just to prove to himself he could be more than his desire, that they could be more than the objects of it. And it's not just me trying to be a good little leftist, it's the fact that I don't need anything and that I can't take much more than I've got to wherever it is I end up next. And I think of how I'll make instead of buy, acquire ideas instead of accessories, but it somehow just doesn't seem as satisfying.
So after that long march through the mall I carry myself back to my happy little avenue of Asian grocery shops and thrift stores and I buy myself a cup of coffee. So there.
