Supermarket

     Oh, the sensation of walking into an American supermarket. First the door. Always. This all-too translucent portal only alludes to what lies inside. You take for granted the doorman, the looming red sensory eye, the modern day gargoyle. All it requires to grant your access to this cesspool of consumption is the ability to MOVE within its sphere of comprehension.      
     Your personal artistic tastes or educational background means nothing to The Doorman, the keeper of this bountiful realm of edible commodities. To It, all matter has but one prerequisite, the ability to MOVE. If only humanity could execute such precise prejudice, but I digress.
      Concrete turns to tile. You feel an implosive burst of conditioned artificial air clashing with the corrupted external air. The impurity of the sun’s illumination is quickly washed away by ethereally nauseous fluorescent lighting. All the feelings that come with a false sense of necessity are there too. Guilt, disdain, comfort, familiarity, but never satisfaction, and always the gut feeling that LIFE IS MEANT TO BE MORE THAN THIS.
     You’re being watched. You know it. The blobs of flesh with fashion senses of couches, the uniformed and well groomed clerks, the scowling eyes of god that are the closed circuit television camera. The truth is, these things do little more than gawk at the spectacle of life passing them by, and only the later has an excuse, as electronics don’t have the capacity to supercede their programming yet. However, man, man gawks. There is no excuse for this, and in the end THE GAWKERS WILL PAY. The gawkers will pay, but that is no concern of ours.
     But it is not just eyes that are watching you. The carts, all in line, they’re poised, waiting for you to vilify their IMMOBILE existence. The water fountain is a tired thing, a martyr, really. It suffers in thankless perpetual servitude, a sign of the company’s gratitude and consideration of their customers comfort and convenience. Quite possibly the water fountain is the only level headed member of the organization. It has about as much interest in humanity as Prometheus had in bird watching. You know full well where all your favorite products are located, but you wander regardless, in search, perchance, of something MORE. You revisit old friends as you walk down the endless expanses that are the isles. The anti-nutritional cereal you were weaned on as a child, the cola you saw that pop-culture icon enjoying so much the last time you and your friends were watching television, all the cans that were lined up so nicely on the shelves on your last visit, they’re all here, still.
     The swirling kaleidoscope of the packages’ colors puts your mind in a next to intoxicated state. Sometimes you can just walk down the corridors and look up at the ceiling and wonder why it’s so high. It makes you feel so small, and that’s just how the designer intended, thus accomplishing everything a good religion does. The products are desperate to be sold, some more than others, with their movie-tie-in display shelves, and self-degrading sale prices. Some are so lowly that like armed assailants they study their prey and arrange themselves in positions which will catch their victims off guard. You may have remembered to pick up your bread, but you forgot the circuses, which is why the glamour magazines, candy bars and crossword puzzles all await your eminent departure through the checkout lanes.
     And what of the checkout lanes? Where else will you see the repression of the human spirit more gauntly displayed? Masses of people waiting, just waiting, to give the clerk their money for the items they hold in their hands. What keeps these people from just WALKING OUT THE DOOR with their desired finds? I see nothing but fear, and complacency. The funny thing is, though everyone in line can’t stand waiting around, no one tries to initiate conversation. There’s no socialization in checkout lines, even though THEY’RE ALL IN IT TOGETHER. It’s as if everyone’s so ashamed of themselves they’re afraid of talking with each other because they’ll see how empty they are themselves! Oh, what a spectacle.
     Things of great elegance and beauty, be they designed by man or nature, will stand in their prominence with or without man’s observations. Things of great utility, such as stoplights, cement, or air; they too exist autonomous from man. Both sects of existence live by one axiom in regards to mankind: THEY NEED US,WE DON’T NEED THEM. Their collective beauty stands regardless of speculation. Consumer goods, on the other hand hold no such luxury. They must crawl, pine, self degrade, ANYTHING to achieve the attention of mass amounts of humans. This is why Americans love buying disposable goods so much; the two have so much in common.
     Grocery shopping plays an integral role in every American’s life. Think about that: All the cheapness, fear, distrust, guilt, and degradation playing such a prominent and necessary role in all our lives. Perhaps we need it, as in, we must truly ENJOY being punished in this nature. Mankind is more in tune with our sins than we give ourselves credit for, and we repent in very subconscious manors, such as shopping. Guilt is our religion. The grocery store is our church. We are all sinners.