set motions enthralled with repetitive
tasks while flying past
sensors
carefully placed to ensure nothing too fast
nothing too slow
s p e e d makes mellow motions
feel imbalanced as the asphalt
turns light into dust across an infinite unnamed unspecified series of repeatable regrets spelled out in the ash of burnt oak
settled in
and waiting
take inventory of all the words
compiled into a list pushed off
into the great void
while jumping off a cliff to experience the thrill of dying and not dying
squished in between and expected to wake up
Monday and push pens into folded pieces
of paper spelling out dichotomies
blissfully bellowing a blistering bolster of
made-for-television moments cropped and readjusted
cropped and arranged
cropped and told exactly the right angle with the right lighting will reach the right trajectory to make
and vanish into thin air,
like the rabbit in the hat,
like the shoe falling off the mountain,
like the phone call waiting to connect
I cut another coupon.
I don’t know how much I’ve saved this year. How much I’ve saved my entire life.
If I had to guess, it would probably be in the six figures. Maybe more. I suppose the one regret I have is that I didn’t take stock how much I saved cutting coupons. I should have started in my twenties. I should have started when I was a teenager. I should have started when my mom asked if I wanted to go to the store with her in grade school and handed me the coupon book filled with page after page of coupons from a wide array of newspaper clippings.
Oh well. Life isn’t a sale on spoiled milk.
There’s quite a few things on sale this week. The key, though, is to find the sales that directly apply to me. If I were to just cut every coupon willy-nilly and buy everything in the coupon book, then I would be wasting more than I was saving. That’s one of those lessons I had to learn the hard way.
Too many years spent never passing on a “deal”. But I was the sucker. I became the product, and it felt like the coupons were cutting me more than I them.
When I finished cutting my coupons for the week, I carefully go over them as if they are a religious artifact that could change form at any minute. I etch out a carefully laid plan of attack. It details everything I will cook and eat for the week, with a few modifications just in case things don’t go to plan. Then I compose a grocery list that chronicles the path I will take when I arrive at the store.
Every aisle, every corner, every department, chosen and predetermined to make my grocery run as efficient and painless as possible.
When I finish shopping and stand before the gatekeeper of groceries, aka, the cashier, I will present to them my carefully manicured clippings of astroparchment savings stacked neatly in my wallet. And I will watch, bask, as the price of my wares steadily tumbles. And I will be satisfied.
Fred Aiken Writing