The Past on the Present (Part II of II)

When I go to the local grocery, I look for good deals on canned food, thinking of the baskets they used to send over from Sweden during WWII. I eye the chocolates and oranges longingly, but settle on a 33¢ loaf of bread and an industrial can of baked beans which can be spread on toast to make several meals. Now that my sponges are worn out, I’ve been cutting up old rags and watering down the shampoo and dish detergent. I drink my coffee black, now, without sugar or cream, since we don’t get ration cards for these anymore.

Ever since my little black and white television broke two months ago, I’ve been listening to the radio a lot and find myself completely entranced by it. NPR is close enough to the BBC to make my own poetic fantasies real, especially now that the landlord is replacing all the windows in the building and has asked us to move everything away from the wall. Of course, that’s where you get the best reception, so I sneak it back there again in the evenings so that I can listen to the news.

Every night I walk over to my mother’s for dinner, since she doesn’t live too far away and I’ve only got half a tank of gas left. I bring my thesis data with me by the reams and we pore over it painstakingly, calculating means and summing column after column. Because of the oppressive heat, we keep the lights off until dusk, when squinting and backs bent, we reluctantly switch a sole light bulb on. I’m reminded of all the near-sighted widows who have taken in some extra mending and have often thought we should set up a stand in the park or somehow turn data analysis into street performance.

Sometimes 53rd street looks a lot to me like Oslo’s Karl Johansgate. Well, more of a ghetto version of Karl Johansgate, since we’ve got a few too many dollar stores and check-cashing places to be that illustrious. Nevertheless, in the afternoons two young boys (I’d guess around twelve) play violin outside of Starbuck’s with the cases jutting prominently out onto the sidewalk. A few of the restaurants have set patio chairs out and you see college students happily debating and suited men hurrying toward public transit.

Walking along 53rd toward Lake Michigan, the cloying heat is sometimes interrupted by a fresh breeze from the lake. Then, I think mostly of Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, as I spy the well-worn man sleeping on the park bench outside the bank. For I am hungry, and tired, and usually wondering why you can’t just walk in somewhere with a paragraph and emerge with cash.

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