Apologies for the radio silence. It’s been a rough couple of weeks—COVID, travel, an intestinal bug (possibly due to the incident I’m about to relate), family visits and stuff. I’ve got a lot of backlog, I just have to get my feet back under with me. Bear with me. —ga
Not five minutes after my mother and I entered the grocery store in a drenching rainstorm, the power went out. The store’s backup batteries kicked in, shrieking intermittently around the store as some lights returned. The produce shelves remained dark and unsprinkled, but the PA, inexplicably, came on. It picked that moment to play Gary Numan's "Cars.” Cars is a splendid song to bop around a faltering supermarket to, all antiseptic synths and robotic delivery. If the music of your youth must be boiled down to soundtrack gruel, it may as well be new wave: at least someone will have been thinking about mindless consumption. I sang the refrain to a refrigerator case of plastic tubs of lettuce:
Here in my car
I feel safest of all
I can lock all my doors
It's the only way to live
In cars
Here in my car
I can only receive
I can listen to you
It keeps me stable for days
In cars
—Gary Numan, “Cars”
Mains power did not come back. The produce sat threatening to moulder. I had filled my cart with cereal and bread and made it to the frozen aisle when I crossed paths with my mother, who said the staff were instructing everyone to return our cold items to the cases.
Then the PA announced they would only be accepting cash. I checked my wallet and found $38.53, plus a bunch of euro coins I hadn’t dug out of my bag. I continued on to get cat food. I idly considered whether getting three cases of LaCroix was excessive, or counted as disaster preparedness.