"look at the woman with the chips ahoy cookies," i say to my brother. he keeps walking. the air is tentative, or awkward, but not like a scenester 'awkkkkwardddd', an actual tense silence that i can feel deep in my stomach.
are the shoppers happy? or does the lady in hall monitor jeans feel resentment toward the three boxes of wheat thins stacked in her cart? my brother lives in portland. do they have chain grocery stores in portland? it feels stupid to ask.
my mother grabs a carton of organic soymilk and i take it out and put in rice milk.
"it's better for you," i explain. i try to smile a little bit.
my mother shrugs and keeps shopping, walking through the frozen food section. i haven't been able to eat frozen food for a long time, longer than i haven't been able to watch t.v. because it feels so depressing. it's a very specific kind of depressing, eating food that was made in a factory. food that comes out of a box.
my brother is a freegan and he plays the acoustic guitar. he dropped out of philosophy school to leave albany. i feel like we should have more to talk about, because we have a lot in common. i desperately want to be best friends with my estranged older brother. i try to think of what to talk about. the days we used to play gameboy and catch grasshoppers in the backyard?
i have to try harder, i think. i approach my brother and ask him about portland. he laughs and asks what i want to know. i ask about dumpster-diving and he tells me it's cool. just that. it's cool.
i sigh and wonder if i am thinking too hard. a boy who used to go to my high school passes by me. i feel like a large grey cloud blanketing portland, oregon, blocking out a small pale moon.
