Meditations on Frozen Food Month

I was tossed and turned on the seas of a turbulent sleep and I awoke here, washed up on the shore of a new island in time. This new day looks pretty much like yesterdays time island. There is even a similar banana in the ebony wooden bowl in the kitchen. This is for all intents and purposes an exact replication of the world I left last night. The only things amiss and out of place are the two empty wine glasses on the low coffee table in the living room. I have absolutely no recollection of those.

A few months ago a rather quiet 14 year old boy was walking the city streets with his sister. When they came within sight of the river, he paused for a moment. No one knows what went though his mind or what made him decide to destroy himself. He left his confused 6 year old sister on the corner. He stripped off his parka as he walked deliberately to the rivers edge. "Bye, Keema," he said. "I'm going to jump in the water." "No, please don't," she cried.

He climbed the restraining wall and then threw himself into the toxic and frigid East River. His little sister saw it all. In the swirling water he bobbed up once, twice and then disappeared. The next time he would be seen his body would be wet, limp and lifeless.

His horrified sister, when trying to explain to police what had happened, reported that he had jumped into the river and then using her six year old logic concluded that “a shark came and ate him”.

I have never understood what drives young relatively healthy people to self terminate. Has the world become so unbearable? It everything such a depressing mess that drowning yourself is preferable to tolerating one more lungful of exhaust tainted air. What kind of world are we living in…has it always been this bad?

He was only 14 and I know very little about him. I do know that he was a black inner city boy whose death made page 3 of the newspapers. His name was Sidney. He had been an honor roll student at one time but something had happened to him that made him announce, one day, that he hated school. Eventually his mother allowed him to stay home and not go to school at all. Later it was found out that he had been the target of attacks and robberies at school. At some point truancy officers forced his mother to send Sidney back to that same school. It was on that day that he was to return that he jumped.

I have thought about him from time to time and the mysteries of self-termination. I just do not get it …the required mindset..... the amount of despair, the fear , the sense of hopelessness and the requisite determination. What calculation went on in that poor boy’s head? I have thought about him often this week.

There is nothing natural where I live. In order to find something natural I go to the supermarket and check the labels. Next to the frozen food section and in the dairy case are plastic yellow tubs that contain something natural. However, it really depends on how willing I am to trust the print on the label and I trust little these days.

When I walk home in the evening I walk through a surreal landscape of abandoned toasters, kitchen mops, vacuum cleaners, TV sets and radios, tangles of fitness machinery, plastic toys and boxes of discarded books available for the passer by. There are stacks of overstuffed black plastic garbage bags piled by the curb and yet couples saunter by holding hands like they are on the shores of the Riviera. The streetlights cast weird shadows and form arrows pointing out special items. Who left that old military jacket hanging on the fence spike and a bit further along there is a forsaken pair of high heel shoes. This consumer society consumes more than it can manage and the toxic excess winds up curbside in disturbing and sometimes entertaining arrays.

Question: Why are so many people now having dreams about the end of the world? It has been reported recently that dreams involving sex are dropping off while dreams involving cataclysms are on the rise.