but i judge the quality of my life to be so low that death would be, as the poet says,
"a welcome guest"
Two bloggers whose blogs I follow--academics whose work I respect--are currently in Europe. One has been writing about food, the other about high art.
Myself, I don't need those two rubbing it in. Here I am in a desolate desert outpost of a cruel empire, having been wrenched out of the heart of Europe by a family emergency. But I don't want to be on vacation on the Continent. I want to return there, and I never again want to set foot on the soil of the Cruel Empire. Living here is a kind of death.
Today I must drive my parents to a doctor's visit. There will be the stress of getting my father and his wheelchair into the car--preceded by the stress of driving him. And then I must bring them home, help my father urinate (hold him as he struggles with his clothes).....
Later I will go shopping at a grocery store that has not a single item which attracts my interest....I will wear my IPod to prevent my torture by the in-store voices telling us
about what a great place the store is and crap music. I will not enjoy my visit and
will become increasingly annoyed as I scurry about attempting to buy every item on
my mother's list---cursing her for her ability to make fine discriminations between unnecessary products, and increasingly getting into a bad mood.
If I am really unlucky the store manager will talk to me, and our conversation will end with his request that I do an online survey---being sure to give him the highest grade---and the feeble promise that I might win 100 dollars or 100 dollars of free groceries.
And then I will seriously wish I were dead because the ugliness of this city and this country is most clearly manifest somewhere between entering the store and leaving it.
Did you know that in Europe people actually have the higher order skill which allows them to put their own groceries into their own bags? There's something deeper to be said about the absence of that skill among the citizens of the USA.........but my stomach is turning now thinking about the nasty reality of this miserable place and what I've got to do today...
GMOOH
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