Potato Peeler

Ridiculous how some things can go, can move and flow, one thing after another like plasma. Ridiculous. One cortado leads to another cortado, one rye leads to another rye, a simple flow of events that, once you step back enough to get the bigger picture, you can see a smorgasbord of things. Of amazing things, ridiculous things. It’s all so easy – all you have to do is try. All you have to do is do. 

Take it, channel it, introduce it to Chanel. Chanel loves those kinds of things that come and go. Ridiculous. Sanctuary for the mind lifts us all up and lets us sing, croon at the top of our lungs. What is the thing? Well, we don’t really know yet. Could be anything. Could be rando, boy-o. 

Hey-o. I make music with my whistles. You see how I do it? It’s taken some practice over the years, but I’ve found a way to hone it. Keeps me entertained, keeps me right as rain. 

A star in the sky put there just for me. What do I do with the star now that I’ve seen it? 

No rules, boy-o. No rules. 

Tearing apart the kitchen trying to find the peeler, where oh where is the peeler:? Magnetic fields, carrying it all with me to the cold blue yonder, the windows propped open although not much of a breeze, wish there was more of a breeze. How I do suffer for my sins. Get ‘em all with dynamite. Let it rain down like frosting. 

Lost my pocket knife in the woods a few years back, and no one to blame for that one but myself. Being bloody foolish is what I was doing. No one to hold me accountable. Not sure how the phrase goes, but something along the lines of “completely and utterly lost my shit.” Fishing pole broke and shotgun was all out of ammo, so out comes the pocket knife and I just jump right in there in the shallows to have it out with those slippery things. Ridiculous. And the knife got lost in the shuffle, I avoided any cuts and abrasions but lost the knife in the process, so I resorted to my bare hands and I still didn’t catch anything, and my knife was gone. 

I had been using the peeler ever since for things, just to avoid any cost (however minimal) to procure a new knife, but a potato peeler is not as effective as a knife, and now I couldn’t find my potato peeler. 

Gone are the days I would lose my shit, my everlasting shit. And the band continued on, playing into the night with nothing to stop it. No ceasefires on the premises, nothing anyone can do about it now, boy-o. Them’s the rules, and we here in this country stick to ‘em. In this country, rules used to mean something. 

That’s what I have been told by my grandparents and great aunts and uncles, so it becomes and so it shifts, but the world has changed greatly since those dinosaurs roamed the earth. 

The air we breathe becomes stolid, and then vaporous, and though it all the lungs adjust and readjust and acclimate, but because the air changes our lungs also change, and we change with our lungs. Isn’t that something ridiculous, boy-o. Catch ‘em if you can. 

I have walked this street enough times in the past week to certify that at least ninety-percent of the people here are off their rockers. Junkies without spoons, let ‘em cook and cool it in the stark moonlight, feening without access to any kind of utensils or mechanics, not even a potato peeler or a can opener. 

I have felt the sulphur around me enough times now to know that life is impermanent, and so is this world, and that that is a good thing. Nothing can last forever – not even junkies, or potatoes, or stars in the sky, so jagged are they. Newark tails me, and so I demonize it. Potholes are present depending on the street and street corner. But even then no one gets through life scot-free. A price must always be paid, whether consciously or subconsciously. 

I have walked this street enough times now without a knife or potato peeler that I can say the street is relatively safe – as in, no one will go out of their way to harass you or attempt to maim you. But they will ask you for drugs – lots and lots of times for lots and lots of drugs. It’s difficult to maintain eye contact with them for long, because you want to avoid the awkwardness and you just know ahead of time what they’re asking for. Ridiculous. 

You can’t get anywhere with spoons. They’re too springy and dull in the wrong places. 

What will I do when I get my next knife? Probably go to the nearest tree and carve my initials into the bark, but I will also show that I am in love with myself. So once it is all said and done, it will read “I.I. + I.I.” Romantic, ridiculous, ready to go. 

Week two on the same street. Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I haven’t seen a crackhead this whole stretch. What is this world coming to? Just when I was wondering which spoon to resort to, I find that the world and its air have changed around me in the span of a week, just one week. Positively ridiculous. And not only that, almost no one is giving me that gelatinous dough-eyed look trying to get my attention and ask for money or drugs, or both. How the air has changed their lungs as well as mine, how my nose seems to grow two or three inches every time I discover that an assumption I made about something or someone was proven wrong. How frequently these lessons appear to me the longer I roam this earth, like my very own dinosaur in its hide. 

My vision blurs as I squint, and then it snaps back into focus as I spread the lids wide and tall. Yep – same old earth alright, same old street. That part of the lawn is still green and that other part of the lawn is still dead. And there’s the same soup can near the garbage bin with God knows what inside each of them – best not to ever look, because you can get some ideas from the smell alone. The same ratty houses and apartment complex. 

But the air is different. And on Friday of that second week, a woman with mousy blonde hair actually offered me a chocolate from a colorful cardboard box she was carrying. The box seemed to be the size of a donut box with who knows how many assorted chocolates inside. She was wearing some kind of smudged light pink lipstick and didn’t have the zombie-like affect that I had seen from her before, for I certainly recognized this blonde woman from the week before. Last I had seen her, she had been sitting on the curb and rocking back and forth restlessly, one of those jonesing in-between fixes kind of things. And she had called me some kind of foul name, I can’t even remember exactly, it was either “pedophile” or “Jewy”. I’m not even Jewish and I’m definitely not a pedophile. She was just in one of those feening states, so she can’t be too harshly judged because of that, I’m told. And right after she called me one of those two offensive names, she asked me if I knew where to score, to which I said “no”, to which she called me either “pedophile” or “Jewy” again and gave a long nasty cough. 

And here was this same woman a week later who looked as if she was neither high nor feening, and not only was she not calling me anything offensive, she was offering me a chocolate of my choice. How much stranger can you get, how much more ridiculous. 

I asked if she recognized me from the week before, and she shook her head and said “no, I really don’t think so”. It was hard to tell if she was sincere or just bluffing. I picked a chocolate out of the box, and she told me the one I picked had raspberry filling, which sounded peculiarly rehearsed. I wondered if the chocolates were laced with drugs – or worse, poison – but I foolishly ate the chocolate anyway because it looked delicious. I found, somewhat to my surprise, that it actually had raspberry filling. I felt fine the rest of the night and the following day. 

Same people on the street as the week before, but less zombie-like and more friendly. The same blonde woman was offering chocolates from her box and people were accepting them happily, but also being polite and not swooping in for seconds anytime soon. Ridiculously respectful. Something in the chocolates, and if not in the chocolates, something in the air. 

I found my potato peeler that Saturday on the following week. I found it underneath the second pillow while I was changing the bed linens. What it was doing underneath one of my pillows I could not possibly tell you – to my knowledge I have never been a sleepwalker. I changed the loads in the washer and dryer and then walked with the peeler into the kitchen, where I set the peeler down on the countertop and opened the fridge to grab an apple from the torn plastic bag on the bottom shelf. Washing the apple under the tap faucet and proceeding to peel the skin with my newfound potato peeler. 

Just ridiculous, those two weeks. Something out of a madcap magazine.