Lost in the Supermarket

Image courtesy of the State Library and Archives of Florida

"I was let off near a supermarket. It was dark. I was standing comfortably enough, looking at the neon lights, but I needed a direction, the hint of some discernible habit, a movement of some kind. A place to stand but at the same time to appear busy. I have no memories, only vague symbols of separations: an overturned kitchen table, a ripped bed sheet, a broken battleship abandoned at the bottom of a bathtub. I went into the supermarket. The aisles were crowded with evening shoppers. There was Muzak. I slid into the warm colors and the clicks of the cash registers. I tried to remember near the frozen foods, I am trying to remember, what it was I had to remember, but I had forgotten what I had gone in for, what it is exactly I have to go out for. I pushed the car down the length of one aisle and halfway up another. I picked up a can of beans. I must have picked up a can of beans because I can remember putting a can of beans back on the shelf and picking up another, a bottle of beans. I put the bottle of beans near cans of chop suey and vegetables and Pet milk. Then, finally, I managed to hold two cans of tuna fish. Something was evoked. A meal." --Rudolph Wurlitzer, Nog (1968)