Clean up on aisle . . . by Bridget Harris (PRIME MOVERS Series)

Clean up on aisle . . .
by Bridget Harris

All days
make me feel bad
for existing.

Like are white claws really an essential item?

I am glad
to be wearing
a mask.

It will disguise
the embarrassed look
on my face
as I walk up
to the check-out counter.

The least I can do
is smize
at the grocer
who has
probably been dealing
with people
like me
all day.

I ask how his day is going so far . . .
He says:
well an hour ago
somebody came
into the store
set up a yoga mat
and started
doing yoga
in the middle
of the aisle
so I had to say
excuse me, ma’am, uh,
you aren’t allowed to do yoga in Jewel-Osco.

I tried to make his day.
He just made mine.

PHOTO: From the book Yoga and the City by Alexey Wind, available at Amazon.com. 

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Like many, I have tried to “get through” this pandemic. And yet, in my effort to “get through” it, I often forget that other people are experiencing this period of time in a completely different way than I am. Most of my days are full of the same monotonous nothing, but I am grateful for the people who grace me with their presence and surprise me. This one is for the grocer who rang me up at Jewel-Osco. May everyone reading this experience a moment of sonder for someone else that you encounter. Their day was in fact different than yours.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bridget Harris is an actress, writer, and creator born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada.  Now in Chicago, Illinois, she believes the future of art is collaborative, paying artists equitably, uplifting untold stories, and recognizing our shared humanity. Visit her on instagram: @b_frances_h and @yourqueenscratch

Los Angeles Notebook, essay by Joan Didion

LOS ANGELES NOTEBOOK (Excerpt)

Essay by Joan Didion

It is three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon and 105 degrees and the air so thick with smog that the dusty palm trees loom up with a sudden and rather attractive mystery. I have been playing in the sprinklers with the baby and I get in the car and go to Ralphs Market on the corner of Sunset and Fuller wearing an old bikini bathing suit. This is not a very good thing to wear to the market but neither is it, at Ralphs on the corner of Sunset and Fuller, an unusual costume. Nonetheless a large woman in a cotton muumuu jams her cart into mine at the butcher counter. “What a thing to wear to the market,” she says in a loud but strangled voice. Everyone looks the other way and I study a plastic package of rib lamb chops and she repeats it. She follows me all over the store, to the Junior Foods, to the Dairy Products, to the Mexican Delicacies, jamming my cart whenever she can. Her husband plucks at her sleeve. As I leave the checkout counter, she raises her voice one last time: “What a thing to wear to Ralphs,” she says.

“Los Angeles Notebook” by Joan Didion is found in her collection of essays Slouching Toward Bethlehem, available at Amazon.com.

Los Angeles Notebook, Essay by Joan Didion

LOS ANGELES NOTEBOOK (Excerpt)

Essay by Joan Didion

It is three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon and 105 degrees and the air so thick with smog that the dusty palm trees loom up with a sudden and rather attractive mystery. I have been playing in the sprinklers with the baby and I get in the car and go to Ralphs Market on the corner of Sunset and Fuller wearing an old bikini bathing suit. This is not a very good thing to wear to the market but neither is it, at Ralphs on the corner of Sunset and Fuller, an unusual costume. Nonetheless a large woman in a cotton muumuu jams her cart into mine at the butcher counter. “What a thing to wear to the market,” she says in a loud but strangled voice. Everyone looks the other way and I study a plastic package of rib lamb chops and she repeats it. She follows me all over the store, to the Junior Foods, to the Dairy Products, to the Mexican Delicacies, jamming my cart whenever she can. Her husband plucks at her sleeve. As I leave the checkout counter, she raises her voice one last time: “What a thing to wear to Ralphs,” she says.

“Los Angeles Notebook” by Joan Didion is found in her collection of essays Slouching Toward Bethlehem, available at Amazon.com.

Photo: Joan Didion and her daughter Quintana Roo Dunne photographed for Life Magazine in 1972 by Julian Wasser.