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mallorys_cameraDREAMED that I was a field nurse in a makeshift African hospital – Rwanda? No, Sierra Leone – the people being brought into the tent had severed hands. There was one man in particular… the aid was so clumsy as the tourniquet was removed that the man’s radial artery started spurting blood. It was awful – this champagne bottle spray of red, red blood, the man staring at it then all of a sudden life draining from his eyes like the turnover of a slot machine, three cherries going to blanks. I’d never seen anything like it.
In the ICU I’d had a talent. Doctors would even joke about it. They’d lead me into a room where the patient was in coma or maybe they suspected a persistent vegetative state, and they’d ask, “So Patrizia – is he still inside?” And I could always tell – well, not always, but a significant amount of the time. “Nope,” I’d say, “he’s out somewhere orbiting Alpha Centauri.” Or, “Yes, he can hear you, he’s deep inside.” Much of the time I was right but what’s even weirder is that some of the doctors joked about using my premonitions as diagnostic criteria. Medicine is rationed in ways unknowable to outsiders.
But I’d never seen a man die quickly before. Never watched the needle jump from full to empty so fast. It disconcerted me in a physical way – in the dream I began to grow dizzy and stagger. When I woke up, I was nauseated.
###
So I’ve noticed a change in my shopping experiences since the economy crashed into a wall. Used to be that retail associates for the most part were idiot bumblers nice enough if you could secure their attention but hey! they’d rather be texting. Now they’re either very, very good or very, very bad. Like there is a new guy at my local UPS and he’s so good that yesterday a transaction that normally takes 15 minutes was finished in five. Contrariwise, the floor guy at Michaels – the Wal-Mart of craft stores – totally blew me off when I asked about silver leaf. He didn’t look like the type of guy who should be working in a craft store, kind of long and lean and furrowed of brow with a ponytail. Had Laid-off Computer Geek written all over him in thick red Sharpie. Of course both guys had probably just been laid off from better-paying jobs that used more of their education, more of their skills. But the UPS guy was making the most of the bad situation, while the Michaels guy was feeling sorry for himself.
I didn’t really want to be shopping at Michaels. There’s a little local crafts store I’ve patronized for the last 15 years where all the clerks know me, have patiently spent up to 20 minutes at a time over the years explaining the pros and cons of Fimo vs. Sculptey, what kind of glue works best when you’re attaching Scrabble tiles to porcelain etc etc But that little store is about 4 months from going under by my calculations. Meaning there’s still a lot of inventory on the shelves but it’s inventory nobody wants to buy. And I needed silver leaf.
Michaels is in a mall that was supposed to have a huge housing development attached to it. The Dunes, it was to be called. An invisible statue of Ozymandias presides over the enormous acreage of empty brown mud where it was supposed to go.
More then anything else in the last week or so – in some ways more than my own store failing – Mario’s in Berkeley got to me. It had been there on Telegraph Avenue for over 50 years and I ate there at least once a week during both my tenures as a UCB student, always ordering the same meal. In fact, when I went back there for the first time as a graduate student – after a fifteen-year absence – Mario grinned at me when I sat down. “Chicken flautas and Mexican hot chocolate, right?”
Mario’s is closing because students don’t seek out funky dining experiences anymore. Students don’t do anything anymore unless there’s a brand name attached to the experience. Brands are the new feudalism.
And that’s the big difference between them and us when we were their age: we were into smashing brand allegiance in all its manifestations.
Maybe that was a bad thing. Maybe brand allegiance is an evolutionary adaptation to having all these people on the planet. As the odometer ticks to 7 billion, maybe human beings can’t afford individualistic experiences anymore and from this point on it’s all about collectivism and aggregation. Dunno…
In the ICU I’d had a talent. Doctors would even joke about it. They’d lead me into a room where the patient was in coma or maybe they suspected a persistent vegetative state, and they’d ask, “So Patrizia – is he still inside?” And I could always tell – well, not always, but a significant amount of the time. “Nope,” I’d say, “he’s out somewhere orbiting Alpha Centauri.” Or, “Yes, he can hear you, he’s deep inside.” Much of the time I was right but what’s even weirder is that some of the doctors joked about using my premonitions as diagnostic criteria. Medicine is rationed in ways unknowable to outsiders.
But I’d never seen a man die quickly before. Never watched the needle jump from full to empty so fast. It disconcerted me in a physical way – in the dream I began to grow dizzy and stagger. When I woke up, I was nauseated.
So I’ve noticed a change in my shopping experiences since the economy crashed into a wall. Used to be that retail associates for the most part were idiot bumblers nice enough if you could secure their attention but hey! they’d rather be texting. Now they’re either very, very good or very, very bad. Like there is a new guy at my local UPS and he’s so good that yesterday a transaction that normally takes 15 minutes was finished in five. Contrariwise, the floor guy at Michaels – the Wal-Mart of craft stores – totally blew me off when I asked about silver leaf. He didn’t look like the type of guy who should be working in a craft store, kind of long and lean and furrowed of brow with a ponytail. Had Laid-off Computer Geek written all over him in thick red Sharpie. Of course both guys had probably just been laid off from better-paying jobs that used more of their education, more of their skills. But the UPS guy was making the most of the bad situation, while the Michaels guy was feeling sorry for himself.
I didn’t really want to be shopping at Michaels. There’s a little local crafts store I’ve patronized for the last 15 years where all the clerks know me, have patiently spent up to 20 minutes at a time over the years explaining the pros and cons of Fimo vs. Sculptey, what kind of glue works best when you’re attaching Scrabble tiles to porcelain etc etc But that little store is about 4 months from going under by my calculations. Meaning there’s still a lot of inventory on the shelves but it’s inventory nobody wants to buy. And I needed silver leaf.
Michaels is in a mall that was supposed to have a huge housing development attached to it. The Dunes, it was to be called. An invisible statue of Ozymandias presides over the enormous acreage of empty brown mud where it was supposed to go.
More then anything else in the last week or so – in some ways more than my own store failing – Mario’s in Berkeley got to me. It had been there on Telegraph Avenue for over 50 years and I ate there at least once a week during both my tenures as a UCB student, always ordering the same meal. In fact, when I went back there for the first time as a graduate student – after a fifteen-year absence – Mario grinned at me when I sat down. “Chicken flautas and Mexican hot chocolate, right?”
Mario’s is closing because students don’t seek out funky dining experiences anymore. Students don’t do anything anymore unless there’s a brand name attached to the experience. Brands are the new feudalism.
And that’s the big difference between them and us when we were their age: we were into smashing brand allegiance in all its manifestations.
Maybe that was a bad thing. Maybe brand allegiance is an evolutionary adaptation to having all these people on the planet. As the odometer ticks to 7 billion, maybe human beings can’t afford individualistic experiences anymore and from this point on it’s all about collectivism and aggregation. Dunno…
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no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 06:39 pm (UTC)"Brands are the new feudalism"
I attempted to string together a theory about modern feudalism a few semesters ago. I agree.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 09:02 pm (UTC)Corporate vasslehood (if that's even a word) is an inevitable effect of a global economy, I'm afraid.
And I do underestimate the effect of low blood sugar all the time!
no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 09:06 pm (UTC)It's just odd to me that a Mexican restaurant starring an honest to God Mexican loses out to a chain Mexican restaurant. But you're right, I'm generalizing on the basis of relatively little information. (Although that's usually the most entertaining kind of generalization. :-)
no subject
Date: 2009-02-20 12:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-20 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-20 12:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-20 01:47 am (UTC)Frankly, for the most part I find Berkeley students depressing. They have such a homogeneous outlook on life, fashion, music, food. So many people trying to be hip, cool individuals and ending up doing the exact same things, dressing the same, thinking the same......carefully constructed and conforming individually.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-20 01:57 am (UTC)They are, aren't they? They could be on a conveyor belt.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-21 06:10 pm (UTC)