Stuffing Shoe Boxes Full of Photographs
J.C.D. Kerwin

Because some of us wish we were still wearing mod suits and mini skirts, click-clacking and whistling our way down the too-crowded streets full of green cars blinking leaves telling us we’re doing a good job, kinda (but not really) saving the earth. Because sometimes yesterdays are nostalgic because they make people hurt for things they had, but sometimes they make people hurt for things they never had and always wanted.

Sometimes we wish we really did have office bars in the high-rises we saunter off to every morning, and in the evenings some small part of us wishes we were smoking cigarettes while cooking a pot roast as Johnny, Mary and Rover play in the yard. Maybe the prepackaged Betty Crocker world would still look brand new and exciting on our black and white TVs, and no one would doubt the footprints when they show us the pictures from the Moon.

Maybe no one would care to worry about how much MSG goes into chicken nuggets; instead maybe it’d be okay to just let everyone grow up and we all wouldn’t give a damn about anything except the newest shit that Kerouac was saying at that dingy bar around the corner. Maybe Davis could sprinkle jazz into our coffee and cover the world with blues and greens so we wouldn’t have to listen to synthesizers and static.

But the vinyl records can’t compare to the 100 free downloads you get every time you buy so-and-so from Apple. Some of us have our noses stuck too close to the glowing screens that we don’t know the light-emitting diodes that came before were the things that lit the way for today’s over-the-counter instant-gratification. Such a shame.

Someday I’d like to wear a smile and skip like I never knew the pages of a history book. Sometimes I’d like to grin and play a record, then pour myself a glass of rum and pretend there’s no such thing as cancer and suck a cigarette if I damn well please. Then I’d laugh because I don’t even like cigarettes at all.

But everyone likes cigarettes because that’s what they show in Time magazine.

Aug., 2012