Idioteque

Sunday, 12:32pm -A young man walks through the Lougheed Mall in Burnaby, BC. He is lost in a familiar place. Approaching the food court, he is searching for something but makes eye contact with nothing and nobody. Strangely, no one seems to see him either. What are you looking for? I wonder. I recognize the journey. Here, he is allowed everything under the sun; but, he wants nothing, though the things speak to him suductively, whisperingly.
hissingly, he seems to decide as he strides past me.

I am not going to lie, I am standing in line at the KFC (one of the more unethical corporations in the world, I should add). I instantly recall the memory of this mystery person.

He looks so out of place. When I first saw him, he passed by like a ghost. Like he knew he didn't belong, as if he was walking on the fringe of this world. Like simultaneously being inside and outside of a room.

An instant later, the tall, young man ascends the food court escalator and wears Kurt Cobain fashion before grunge was a mainstream product, packaged up to be bought.

On his back, a Bob Marley backpack.

As I am waiting at KFC, I find no less creative explanation as to what this poor soul was doing in the deafening food court of consumerism at the Lougheed Mall, than this:

After a 3 month trip to Tokyo (specifically to Yakuza hash bars),the young man travelled to the Maldives (this is where Starr Jones was vacationing before the Tsunami of 2005 hit South East Asia...why this random fact of insignificance infects part of my brain, I am unsure), where he was abducted off the beach by aliens. They dropped him off in the hub of his homeland (North Burnaby at the Lougheed Mall).

12:36pm- the young man searches, but finds meaning nowhere. 'No, there is nothing here for me,' he resolutely decides.

I imagine there is something sorrowful in his decision to leave it all and go back with the aliens, which is probably why nobody wants to look at him in the mall.

Up the escalator. He looks as bewildered as I felt when I returned from Trinidad. I remember my first foray into grocery shopping after being away in Trinidad: two hours later, when I had failed to return, Erik went out to look for me. He found me staring blankly at a display of maple syrup. My shopping cart was still empty. Did you know that there are 33 different kinds of syrup? Confronted by so much, how does one choose? The young man is wary of such conveniences.

Looking upwards, he notices that the sky is overcast.

My nuggets combo is cold. (for the record, I was at the mall eating genetically modified, hormone injected, antibiotic dependent chicken deep fried in trans-fat, while waiting for my non-environmentally friendly dry cleaning to be ready at the local Asian triad/money laundering/human trafficking ring/Dry Cleaning business)...but at $1 per shirt, who can complain?

"Go back to the aliens, commrade", I think.

12:42pm - raaaaah, raaah.