by Lance Allen
***
I told her before. I’ll tell her again, if she’ll listen. They’re all blind to what is before them. The lies are in plain sight. But so is the pain. The pain caused by the lies. When the lies are abandoned for the familiar and safe, there is no pain, no discomfort. The colors are vibrant and tantalizing. I see the black and white in the shadows, they cloud my vision. They dull the color.
Last week I went to the grocery store, I wanted a few things. I don’t like going to the grocery store. I need to eat though. I have to go to the grocery store. The colors by the door are always vibrant and bright. I see them first. I walk by them. Strawberries shouldn’t come all the way from California. The farm down the street shouldn’t have grown condominiums.
I bought some hamburger, some chicken. Oreo’s take me back to when I was a boy and played outside. I picked up some salt, a bag of sugar, a bag of flour and a sack of white rice; a jar of pickles and a bottle of ketchup; some bbq sauce; three boxes of macaroni. Then I saw the cereal.
Boxes of cereal line one entire aisle of shelves; from top to bottom; all the colors of the rainbow and all bursting with promises of health and happiness. The mash-up of colors is hypnotic and altogether very distracting. But the goal is the same. Turn off the part of the brain that question’s. Bypass all the reason and insight and fully charge the part of the brain that desires. Overload the sensors with a melodic vision of carefree summer days and blissful meadows. Gloss over the black and white tag beneath all the color. Buy your health and your happiness.
I didn’t walk down the cereal aisle. I never walk down the cereal aisle. It’s the most perverted aisle in the grocery store. You don’t have to agree with me. I sometimes don’t. But I hate the cereal aisle because it attacks us at our weakest point. Childhood memories are sacrosanct and they know this. It’s underhanded and vile. They use food to play off of our emotions so we shell out too many duckets for something that costs almost nothing. The nutritional value is prostituted; the real impact is covered over in a glossy wrapper.
