Indigestion

I'm eating my salad from the subsidized cafeteria, the only place in this city where you can get broccoli that is not worth its weight in gold, and onions that were not massaged by hand and told bedtime stories. I am cleaning up after stressful meeting number one today. The kind of day that starts off busy, ends up ugly, and involves a lot of talking to myself in between. Or maybe that's just me. It was a morning of pretend numbers that climb up the sides of buildings and dive back into the yacht club on the other side, into the pockets of Burberry coats or trust funds in the Caribbean. The blindness of accumulation only walks in a straight line across the page. Perhaps stepping sideways to explore another garden of well-manicured possibility and tasteful profits. No plan must combine with another plan, or exist beyond seven years. Proper segregation of opportunity, to keep order in the world, if you please.

I picture the people we speak of walking down the street, cut up into their consumer essences. Average spend, favourite colour, expected wait to speak to customer service, miles to nearest Taco Bell. A stack of paper cuts across their bodies. The papers slice through their ankles, their tired hips, rest against their spines, take a curved wave off their collar bones, hang off their ears. The papers declare to each other: what a great thing we've found! A creature that likes to bounce up and down, push back and forth, resist sideways motion, reflect candlelight, and turn towards other ears! Best of all, it needs cleaning, oiling, and protection from the elements. A whole ecosystem to support scavengers. Remarkably resilient against neglect and abuse. These delicate stacks don't notice as the slices slide back and forth against each other, letting in a sigh of air sometimes. Pressed between the gravity of the earth and the march of time, glued together with occasional bout of hope, they manage to make love and fight wars.

One day you might meet a slice person. You might stand in his shadow on the bus, just as the sun is setting on a brilliant autumn day. Flecks of dust glinting in the air might pass through an incongruity in the pancakes. He might frown at a bump in the road or the kids talking too loudly in a language he doesn't understand. But truly, his insides are raw from the grind of earth between slices marking imported olive oil and that last Botox treatment. A slice woman kept in place by a delicate vest of statistics and accomplishments might scatter in the wind when a good friend dies.

Maybe the unbearable piercing of children and God, of leaves changing colour and the smell of fresh tea, will weave these slice people back together. Maybe they will become less a feeding ground for need and an experiment in insatiable desire. Maybe we will become less see-through to marketing and more transparent to ourselves.