a version of this essay was first published December 8, 2015
“Christmas is coming,
the goose is getting fat,
please put a penny in the old man's hat,
if you haven't got a penny,
then, a half-penny will do,
if you haven't got a half-penny,
then God bless you.”
I went to the nearest Dollar Store to buy old-fashioned, stringy, silver tinsel for our christmas tree.
All that glitters is not silver or gold, is never ever golden, whether you buy your pretty ornaments or wrapping paper for a buck – or two at Dollar Tree, Walmart, Target, Macy’s or Saks for $5, $10, $30 or $50. The only difference is the retailer’s profit margin — very rarely is there a difference in quality when it comes to seasonal items, disposable items and sundries.
The season of peace and beauty feels very false once you know and remember to never forget that all those beautiful ornaments and decorations adorning almost every American home, restaurant or holiday venue are made by women, children, or men in sweatshops who are breathing in lead dust, paint fumes, plastic glitter, chemicals and pigments often for less than $30 per 12-hour shift; all that beautiful crap then warehoused, shipped, stocked and sold by non-living-wage, multi-job workers in the U.S.
Yet, while I’m there roaming the aisles or in the long line to check-out, I feel an overwhelming sense of community with my fellow city dwellers — the shoppers, the store’s workers and with all the workers of the World — particularly those in Yiwu, Zhezhang, China who are mass-producing a vast majority of all of this shit.
ironically & hilariously,
still made in the USA!
I also feel an overwhelming revulsion of the systems of ‘growth’ and development: capitalism, consumerism, and human and natural resource “management” which are uniquely undeniable in the fluorescent, depressive uniformity of the minimally staffed chaos found in a busy, urban dollar store,
Even with the standard, elderly, underweight or overweight security guard to police some of the poorest shoppers of the World, there’s always at least one bonafide character in the dollar store — or just outside its doors.
Many of the people who’ve no alternative except to shop there wear their flaws, their illness, their eccentricities, their pain and their hearts on their sleeves. I do much better with this transparency than I do with the fakery of false propriety and pretentious refinement, which often reveals something far uglier and sinister behind the gated entrances, the nuclear — or modern family, the well-appointed corporate and residential lobbies, and the doorman’s station.
Some people shopping are very like me as a consumer — there, only for very specific items: tinsel, gift tags, birthday or holiday decorations, arts and crafts supplies or wrapping paper; or they’re bargain hunters of stuff and more stuff: hoarders; most of shoppers though, rely on fixed incomes or are minimum-non-living-wage workers; others are flat-out the poorest among us or actively unhoused, without transit and without options to purchase better, safer, healthier elsewhere — or to prepare or cook food, so they’re buying toothpaste, non-perishable, ready-to-eat processed food, hot-plate or microwaveable food; soap, shampoo, detergent; candy, batteries, mittens, hats, pens, papers and other toiletries, staples and sundries at the only place that they can afford to.
This particular evening at the Dollar Tree at Six Corners, Portage Park, Chicago, a man of about 65 years was in open conversation with his slightly younger female companion — a petite and quite pretty, woman with platinum blonde hair, her eyelids heavy from a pharma high — they communicated by way of him shouting across the length of the store to her, and she replying softly, yet aloud to him – as if he were within a whisper’s distance. This went on the entire ten minutes as I waited in line. Eventually, another check-out aisle opened, so I moved to it, but suddenly, that man was behind me – a snortled breathing and a bit of a Tourette’s-like affectation of muttering accompanied him. “I lost my phone!” he shouted to her, “Call it! I can’t find it!!”
“I always lose my phone when I’m here,” he says beyond me to the young, green-eyed beauty operating the cash register. She smiled and laughed.
“Call it!!! I lost it again – I always lose my phone in here.” The phone must’ve rung in the manager’s glass-walled, little office, because out she came with his phone. “Thank you, I always lose my phone when I’m shopping in here.”
Yet, somehow, it seems, he always finds it or it is found, and safely returned to him among the most marginalized shoppers and underpaid workers of the City.
I left without the stringy, silver tinsel — they were out of stock — I found it at another Dollar Store just two streets over — but with some scotch tape, tissue paper and a couple of grape Blow-Pop suckers, and more:
Everything is illusion.
The true silver, the sparkle, the gold is solely and wholly within, and is so very often found generously emanating from among the regular cohort of any inner-city Dollar Store.
yuletide & christmastime, 2015
“Christmas is coming,
the goose is getting fat,
please put a penny in the old man's hat,
if you haven't got a penny,
then, a half-penny will do,
if you haven't got a half-penny,
then God bless you.”
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 