In the air
There was something in the air today. Preseasonal promos on the radio. The house near the mall flashing out a cheerfully bright message - that in just 52 days, the christmas consumerism marathon will culminate in one week of too much family, too much booze, and slipper socks. Ah christmas. It's not a day. It's a fucking ideology.
It wasn't upon me yet. I was aware of the christmas items encroaching on the halloween aisle around October 26, however it seems I had been even more self absorbed than usual with my midsemester move. I think this inward attention had saved me from noticing these christmasy things on too acute a level. That or my mother and brother tag team calling me throughout my move to give me updates on my brother's most recent, disasterous meth-moment. It ended with the hospital, I was told by phone as I was cleaning the toilet at my new place.
On my way home tonight, I stopped for movies and food. The guy at the counter in the video store mentioned that he was on CNN today. "Really?" I said, genuinely pleased to be interacting with people again but torn about displaying too much interest which might encourage a full conversation. Mostly I was worried about the mood of the growing line of people behind me. Friday at 5 PM in the video store involves a lot of people who are no doubt hoping to get this done fast before getting home. The impatience was palpable but since this is CT, the people behind me merely shifted around, stepped up a little closer to me, and pressed their already overly thin lips together more tightly when the kid added "it was a crowd shot but I was totally on CNN for like 5 seconds!" Someone behind me snapped at her children "Asia! You get over here now. Where's your brother?"
After escaping with only a few more huffs and exasperated puffs from the uptight citizens of NE CT, I went to the supermarket next door.
About 10 paces into the supermarket it hit me. The stench of christmas. It took a few unfortunate passed through that area for me to realize where it was coming from - a big bin of bags of scented pine cones. The "scent" was like cinnamon but cinnamon on steroids and wearing an entire bottle of some horrid 1970s cologne (like "big game rhino").
I'm not antiperfume or scent. But I am one of those people who is rather sensitive to smell though. Chemically stinking shit like the reek emanating from a vat of big game cinnamon scented pine cones puts me into some kind of overdrive nauseated brain scramble.
I worked my way through the supermarket taking too long on account of being brain scrambled, forgetting most of what I came for and abandoning several items in order to avoid having to cut back past the cones once I had identified them as the source of the holly jolly stink.
The nearly inescabable smell assault made me realize something though. I'm totally fucked this christmas. See, several months ago, I started having sort of intrusive music issues. This has not ever been the case with me. I'm not one of those people who go around humming things, who gets song after song stuck in her head. Or at least I didn't used to be. Sure, the occasional "ear worm" would make it's way in now and then. But not ever to this constant level. The nice thing has been that I found I can usually "reprogram" it when I want to by thinking of another song. But that assumes I am not being subjected to nonstop external stimuli of the musical variety. This year, with the constant stream of christmas music just around the corner, I fear my mental ipod will be permanently stuck on a wretched yuletide shuffle, prompted by too frequent sensory collisions with bells and chimes, blaring horns and hurried strings, and other seasonal musical slop.
Hurry up and start buying some SHIT for christmas!
It's just around the corner...
...through there, down the hall, and around the next corner.
The lightswitch is on your right.
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