On this day of Easter, I ate alone. The meal was free, I having taken advantage of a restaurant's round of charity. I find my economic troubles of late, hard to talk about. It was suggested to me by a psychiatric professional that I make the call to secure the dinner. The staff person who answered my call was friendly enough. I did not ask if the meal was indeed free, but it occurred to me later that maybe i should have. In the passing weeks I've asked my dining companions, “You got this one?” just to be sure there had been no miscommunication. I've tried to author an adage, that “Free” is a spice. That is to say, that when there is no cost to food, the taste is enhanced. It is fortunate when something can be spared. It is less fortunate to be spared. When I opened my Styrofoam carton on my kitchen's card table, the gray light shone on the divided portions of food. The restaurant's selfless spice wafted up to sting my nostrils.
Some time in the spirituous time leading up to this year's Easter celebration, I spoke with a male peer outside his apartment building. I spoke of my wish to skateboard in the coming months of dry pavement. Admittedly to him, I'd been the town fool, “trying out” skateboards of young kids. I know a couple of tricks that don't tax exertion, and I'm happy to share. The kids generally flee after I've dispensed a cigarette, and this hardly makes it as a NaMbLa Monthly cover. I skated in my youth, and I've shown that the skills involved decline over time. My friend, whom I'd been speaking to, offered me a slightly used skateboard for a very small sum. It was the first of many trade-offs I considered since then... For example, considering the price and volume of gas station toilet paper over store bought. Not to mention that through my poverty goggles, the skateboard appeared as a stack of nine McDonald's double cheeseburgers.
Some personal checks I put through the floor might pass in court with an insanity plea, I jest. A portion of the service charge will be dismissed; I regained a conscience when six envelopes showed up in my mailbox, and I called the number. A judge in a different town cut my disorderly conduct ticket in half, after I said I'd been on half my medication. This was in regards to the disorderly conduct that was intro to Act II of my life's instability. This time, at odds with money, it was easy to seek solace in the pit of my stomach, a canceled checking account, no transportation to the pawn shop, a defunct car with a lien. In ways, I was living out a short story I had written in school. In that, my concern over these things had widened to the ever present and unsolvable. I cooked the last, a pizza crust mix in a bread pan, and went to the mall foyer to play guitar for change.
Snippets of talk radio tell me very little from all angles. Sign on the street was the guy `i gave a buck eighty-two and a Marlboro, who said he was hungry. This, in this city that has but a meniscus in metropolis status. I show up in a political chat room, but it's like a lecture hall not barring silly string. I hang with several friends I've never met in order to pass Easter, tonight. I'd have a job if I hadn't quit mine at the beginning of the year. I'd thought I was doing an excellent job of mastering the new software system, until we aired an “American Cash to Go” commercial at the stroke of midnight... when the ball drops in Times Square. Easter, Twenty aught-nine is to say it, marking resurrection. I gather some from the newsreels. Like in adolescence, it's not clear what the Teens will bring. But, the price of cigarettes is now three times that of gasoline. For a moment I pondered siphoning gasoline out of my car and reselling it. It occurs to me now that I might have wanted to sell back minutes on my calling card. I find it hard to ask for food, asking for money alone. I almost want to peer at people peculiarly, incite a guessing game, until they guess that I am hungry.
I encounter the occasional news article of note on Internet chat rooms. And, I got up to date weather reports on last year's blizzard in Seattle, firsthand, from a resident. Still, I learned a lot from working at a TV station, with a half hour of news every night. I have my vices. In addition to chat rooms, there is fast food. I've applied for a web design gig, but I have an application to my neighborhood grocery store.