Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: supermarket

  • supermerch

    In the supermarket I queued for the African check out dude who’s always calm in the midst of all the Germanness. A blonde woman behind me set down, emphatically, a bagful of fresh pak choy and then behind it, all in a heap, several packets of cream-filled biscuits, a jar of chocolate pudding, some plump filled fresh pasta and a tray of chocolates. I said, indicating the leafy greens, “This seems cute to me. Because one buys that – one gets to buy all of this.”

    She burst out laughing. “Stimmt.” True. I looked at my own pile and felt concerned its greenery might seem chiding. “I’m the same,” I said, showing her the huge bag of green grapes. “These are really a sweet treat but they look like vegetables.”

    “Very wise,” she said, still laughing, “it’s perfectly balanced.” We were chortling. The man at the register bade good evening to the person in front and picked up my Toblerone, the excuse for all the grapes. “Guten Abend,” he said, and I said, “Guten Abend.” Every sly glance sideways between me and the blonde girl started us both spluttering mirthfully. I stashed the grapes in my thousand-use bag and took the bar of chocolate from his brown hand, saying, “Beautiful Celebration-Evening!” which is how Germans tell each other, I am glad for your sake it’s nearly knocking-off time. Heading out to my bike parked under the trees I was thinking for the hundredth time that some poet among Germans has decided the wooden divider separating my groceries from hers shall be called a cashier’s Toblerone: Kassentoblerone.

  • summer treat

    The woman behind me at the supermarket checkout had a little pile of five caramel bars, two gossip magazines of the trashiest kind, the ones with really flimsy rattling paper, and a tub of flavoured yoghurt. She saw me looking and her brow contracted. When I said, “I’m so happy for you,” which in German is said, I rejoice myself for you, “that looks so delightful,” her whole face relaxed.

    “Ja,” she said, and picked up the stack of caramel bars and hugged them. “It looks really great, doesn’t it.”

    “It really, really does,” I said. When I reached my bike in the row of bikes out front someone had dropped a leaflet in its basket to advertise a yoga retreat on Corfu. It is colder today and the summer, only two days old, feels already threatened.

  • don’t stand so far from me

    Och, my heart’s pounding! I just queued in the supermarket next to a man taller than me (rare) with whom I conceived one of those fleeting yet it stains your day – your weekend! – mutual desire curves founded in, apparently, mutual liking as well as pheromonal drift. Oh, I stood next to him and he stood next to me. He came up behind me and I cleared my stuff out of the way, as Berliners often do for one another, so that he could lay his heavy armfuls of groceries on the band. “Danke schön,” he said, in just this irresistible voice, and I glanced up and met the most beautiful eyes and a shock went through me and my face lit up and I said, “Bitte!” A pleasure!

    After that we both crowded up close to one another and he was humming and after a little while started singing so that I would see what a gorgeous voice he had. I was immersed in the glowing feeling running up and down my nearer, left side and in parsing his collection of groceries (single!) and in searching round the vault of my brain for some plausible, yet open-ended, conversational gambit. The woman ahead of me had already greeted the cashier and her goods were being rung up. We hadn’t long.

    I picked up the plastic divider between his stuff and mine, only later realising what a perfect psychological expression of my wishes this really was. “Ich habe gehört,” I remarked, holding it out to offer to him, “daß diese manchmal ,Kassentoblerone’ gennant werden.” Ya know, I’ve heard these are sometimes called Cashier Toblerones.

    “Stimmt!” he said, yeah that’s right! He took the thing from me and lifted it up. Pretended to stuff the end in his mouth and tear off a hearty chunk. We laughed and then there was nothing else to do but grow shy, so we both turned back to the belt and gazed at the groceries. He checked out my stuff and I checked out his. I was buying the ingredients for a carrot and ginger soup and he likes decent cheeses. My side was humming. Oh, I was just so happy and contented to be standing just that little bit too close to him, and to be in each other’s aura. There was nothing more to say, apart from, “When will you be here next, you’re so goddamned cute,” so when my goods were rung up I sang out, “Tschüss!” and he said, “Tschüss!” and I ran laughing out of the supermarket, saying to the giant punk out front who holds out his little army cap for donations of spare change, “Du siehst ja so total schön aus, heute!” You’re looking so beautiful today! It wasn’t just the punk in his Saturday outfit of fishnet stockings and a zebra print mini, it was the light, the few trees left in the corner of the car park, the little boy zooming on his scooter with a great determination, the dad who stood and watched with his arms grimly folded – I ran home and said to my companion, who was sitting up in bed holding his stomach and had requested, when I said what might make you feel better, carrot soup, “I just met this man in the supermarket and we liked each other so much! Oh, it was such a joy just standing next to each other.”

    Ordinarily these kinds of stories are just part of the ongoing conversation between us but today, stricken with stomach flu and hungry for his first solid meal in three days, the poor guy went, “Don’t, I’m gunna vomit!” He was clutching his stomach. I has pushed open the window and was peering out in case the cute guy and his cheeses might have decided to walk home down our end of the street, in case I might see him. Bye, love.

  • love is the what

    Reaching my Kiez in the late afternoon* I nearly ran into a boy-girl couple kissing strenuously outside the Turkish supermarket. This supermarket annoys me because they always reel off too many plastic bags and I have seen a man who had put his single apple into one bag accept another bag to carry it home in. My, how they kissed. He was twisting on his feet. She opened her mouth and throat, tipping back her head. I was so rejoiced by them I started to laugh, and then the flirty guy on the nub of the corner who sells his own ice cream laughed along with me, though he through an accident of geography had missed the kiss.

    I went onto the market. Berlin markets start late. You can go down there at ten or even eleven and find people still sleepily setting up. But as the afternoon ripens it has settled into a groovous swing – that is the opposite of grievous, I suppose – a grievous swing, specially down the other end where there’s a platform built out over the water and it’s filled with people, many of them just gazing and smiling but some with their eyes closed or even eyes open are dancing, from a sitting position or standing up to shake it out. Two guys with a microphone had set up their bag. And were piling us all into it, gleefully. Och music. You’re indescribable, I know. I came through the markets carrying my head on its stalk and I have lost a little weight just lately and with it, years, and the man who sells bolts of plain linen and cotton, unbleached – are there that many painters in the region? – smiled at me lingeringly, when I glanced back and smiled he was still smiling and he tipped at me his head, consideringly, almost obsequious. That is what beauty can do for us and I had forgotten, but now I remembered.

    At the jewellery stall set up on a bin with a velvet-clad board clapped over it by a Japanese man who wears busy gathered pants and feathers woven in his hair, another beautiful guy with golden shoulders was standing with his arms out and his hands held up, tilting his head from one ring to another, determining which one set off his gorgeousness the best. He amused but he bored me. I’ve known those men. At the organic vege stall run by curmudgeonly lesbians who all live together on a smallholding outside Berlin I asked, Hey, can I photograph your beetroots? They just look so proud there on their blue background, holding out their leaves. Yes, she said, winnowing flowering green leaves which are sold by the hundred grams for a woman who had two children with her, each child carrying her own tiny handbag and each pushing her own tiny pram. I left off grooving and came up home, walking on the other side of the market street, past the stall which sells nine types of potatoes. And as I came past the cheese lady who cuts pale butter off a sweetly sweating slab I ran across those same two kids, still kissing, wringing the greenery out of this day which as a leaf this afternoon fell past me just as my shutter clicked surely must be one of the last days of the year on which we can wander and groove, we can kiss in the streets and call out to one another, hey Berlin. I passed a discount stall flogging cheaply printed night shirts in cellophane, one of them said, in curly handwriting font, LOVE IS THE but I turned it over and discovered there was a slab of cardboard slid down the back, to stiffen the shirt for display, and that covered the rest of the words and though my mind flooded with suggestions I could not make it out. Now I have to spend the rest of my life wondering. What is love?

    *Kiez is the few streets between you and your main roads: your own neighbourhood.

  • opportunista

    In the supermarket I was queuing in front of a woman with a lot of groceries. Her arms were laden and I stepped aside to offer her the space to put her stuff down on the conveyor. Germans are possessive about their conveyor space and it remains the only country where I have ever had someone not only install one of the little dividers between my groceries and his, but then lean across me to reinstate the missing divider between mine and the person’s in front of me; then rock back on his heels and give a satisfied nod, saying to himself almost sweetly, “Hmmphf.”

    The woman spilled her goods onto the belt and said, “Ich hab’ gerade ‘was vergessen. Kannst du…” She had forgotten something, she darted away into the aisles and disappeared. I said hello to the guy with all the piercings who works the register. He scanned my bunches of vegetables one at a time. The woman slipped back into her place in the queue and put one of those toilet ducks on the belt beside her things. She smiled at me. Her smile, and the fact that she’d used du rather than Sie earlier, gave me a slender opportunity and I made the most of it.

    “Kannst du bitte – das nächste Mal – vielleicht daran denken, etwas ein kleines bisschen umweltgesunder zu probieren?” Couldn’t you please, next time, perhaps think of trying something a bit environmentally healthy? I tipped the plastic duck-beaked bottle to show her. “This stuff is complete poison. It goes down the drain and comes back out the tap, goes into our rivers. There is a brand called – Frog, I think they sell it here, you might try it.” I strove to sound as casual and off-handed as I could. This is perhaps the five hundredth such conversation I have had in a grocery store with a stranger and I’ve got skills. “Have you ever thought about trying the recycled paper toilet tissue?” I’ll ask, sidling up like a flasher in the aisle. “Ah, no,” they might say, looking startled. Often they confide they have sensitive skin and it’s supposed to be much scratchier. Oh, good god. Around us in the shadows rainforests fall to bulldozers and orangutans limp away from palm oil plantations so that we can eat our corn chips and make our soap. “Actually, it’s softer,” I always say. I’m smiling. “I mean – it’s been pulped twice.”

  • super moon to the rescue

    A knock at the door when we finally trudge home, carrying our groceries, exhausted. It’s the darlingest neighbour in the world. “Oh, hi!” “Hey Cathoel. Just wanted you to see the last supermoon.” I have gasped and clapped my hand to my mouth. “Oh my god!” He is telling me, “It was even better last night. But,” confidingly, “it’s pretty good tonight.” I am still gazing at the moon. “Fuck!” I say without meaning to. It has just sailed up coolly from behind a giant building. It has the sky to itself, apart from a few pilot fish like lesser boats milling round the giant sleek swans at the start of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. My neighbour tells me shyly, “I love the moon.” He is wearing ugg boots and a pair of work shorts. It felt like summer today, suddenly, but it grew chill as it grew dark. When we set off to the shops an hour ago I had to laugh: partner in his ugg boots, me still stubbornly wearing sandals. “The pessimist and the optimist set out on a shopping trip together,” I told him, to make him laugh too.

    At the supermarket we saw a display of premature mince pies. They were packaged in festive red and green with silver holly. September, October, November, December. I spoke to a man with a trolley full of plastic bags about whether he might ever think of bringing his own. A look of weariness passed over his face. He explained what I couldn’t know: They use them again. His particular household – the boy gaping silently from behind the flowering trolley – has special exemption. Circumstances. Babies. “We have a baby at home who uses disposable nappies.” I felt the sinking in my heart, could say nothing. He said, kindly, shifting into higher-pitched Real Estate Voice, “Thank you for your concern. I’m sure it’s helping.” You see, it’s different for me. I am selfish. I am lazy. I got my own reasons. We got a baby at home using disposable nappies. God knows you could never wrap those in, say, newspaper. I was blinking back tears and had to run outside to collect myself. When a pair of ugg boots appeared inside my line of vision I looked up. He was blinking, smiling, holding out his hand weighted down with the shopping sack rendered from old cement bags. We walked home and took refuge in our house and then the neighbour winkled me out and now the suberbmoon glides up this grey concrete sky as though drawn on an invisible string. It is blond and impervious to smaller, humbler craft, like the frantically blinking jet plane cruising low toward the harbour. It is better than anything you’ve ever seen. It just is. If you’re alive right now, run outside and look up.

  • the plastic to drown us in

    Last week on the market I spoke to the girl queueing before me at the fruit stall. She had said to the cashier, Could I have a bag for that too please? which focused my attention from its dreamy perusal of the mountains of plump and glossy fruits. She had put her single lemon, her three apples, her two mandarins and her kiwi fruit each in separate plastic bags lest they contaminate one another. When the guy turned away to change her fifty dollar note I spoke.

    Excuse me. I’m just so distressed by the… amount of plastic you’re consuming. Could you, I mean.

    Her expression helped me. Goofy, caught out, unblaming, sprung. I gathered pace. Couldn’t you please think about bringing your own bags? I know, she said, looking down. I know I should. I said, pleadingly, They drift into the oceans. They sort of fly about. If you are a turtle or a fish they look like food, jellyfish.

    I know, she said again, I should. Please, I said, please do. It’s really really time. And we smiled at each other and she walked away carrying her kilo of petroleum byproducts and once I’d paid for my bouquet of greenery and come out from under the awning into the wintry sunshine, so pleasurable, my partner was standing there opening wordlessly his canvas shoulder bag and as I fed the spinach and fennel in feet-first I was aware of the plastic bags girls passing us, seeing this transaction, maybe taking it home and owning it: we can normalise what seems a chore. However tonight standing at the checkout of a grocery store I felt unable to address the woman standing in front of me in line who had put every morsel of fruit and every mortal vegetable each into its own noxious, off-gassing solitary confinement. Bad, naughty vegetables, you suffer in there until you learn how to behave. I looked her over from her wood-heeled boots up to the leopard scarf that was slung so perfectly casually across her sleeves. I thought how I might say, Couldn’t you consider, and how she might say, It is none of your business, and how I might say, But it is my business! I have to live on the planet you are desecrating.

    In between I visited the nut store in West End where everything is in tubs or big sacks, and you point and say, I’d like a half a kilo of those please, a wedge of that. The good-looking and ordinarily bearded man who came out from behind the counter cheerful and broad said to me, Would you like a bag for those? I said, No thanks. See I think I’ve already used up my lifetime’s…. quota of plastic bags. A laugh of surprise spurted from him. I think I probably have too, was all he said. After the grocery store lady with her terrifying scarf I walked home in a kind of fugue. The moon hung like a slim segment of moon high in the blackened and starless sky, a plastic bag drifting in a bottomless trench. How can we have come this far without catching on to ourselves, I thought. Is the water just too dark and warm? Are we asleep?