(Actually written April 6th)

I slept late today. It was deliberate, and it felt good. I awoke with a pounding headache though. I got up, turned off the heater, and made a cup of coffee. I cleaned up the place a bit, and left the house with my gym bag, and a need to run errands. It’s Sunday, it shouldn’t have been that crowded on the streets, but my god; Trader Joes was complete anarchy. I waited for quite a while in a line of cars waiting to get into the parking lot. I wanted to turn around but I was literally trapped from all directions. The inside was so over crowded I could hardly walk through isles. People’s faces were either that of total distress, or complete vacancy. And everyone was trying to get there first. “excuse me, pardon me, excuse me, pardon me… hey that asshole cut me off with his big cart.”


What is it that‘s got everyone in Studio City at Trader Joes? It’s Sunday for crying out loud. I suppose it’s the fact that people need things, damn it, and they don’t want to sit at home and watch TV for hours on this pretty (yet quite gloomy) day, with their hand in their pants, on a Sunday Afternoon. Hey I know! Let’s go to Trader Joes! Meanwhile, I’m doing my best to keep a minimalist frame of mind, by telling myself, “I don’t need all that fat” as I’m inspecting the label on a loaf of bread. And, “I don’t need to spend five dollars on this bag of dried ginger” But it’s organic. But it’s only 90 calories per 3 slices. “No that’s too much money for a bag of ginger, go for the cheaper one with the refined sugar.” I’m being overloaded by a barrage of consumerist hook and reel. Health claims, and good buys are all tugging at me, and I don’t know who to trust. I’m a fallen victim, and am furthermore, no different than any of these other stressed out middle-class head cases. After all, I had no actual need to be there. I didn’t need the ginger, or the cereal. If I were living in “the now“, I wouldn’t need to kill time.


Minimalism, that is the key. I don’t need anything. I really don’t. I drove home, and thought I did pretty well, having only spent 13 dollars. I only took what I needed, with the exception of the organic ginger. I put the bag in my trunk so I wouldn’t open any packages until I got home. I had these very words floating around in my head, in a “matter of fact” narrator’s voice. So here they are.