Resist

Written by: Emeka Nweze
The argument for intellectual property is a slippery one, what with the chilling reality of colors being trademarked and patents being granted for living organisms. Nevertheless, the author humbly requests that credit and proper citation be given if this work is ever referenced.
Baroque, allegorical and despite oblique allusions, this work is fictitious.
It is a cold evening. The absence of leaves on trees and the diminished visibility due to a heavy blizzard gives away the season and hints at the climate zone. A large convenient store sits in a suburban neighborhood.
The automated sliding doors are wide open due to a seemingly relentless stream of holiday consumers frantically trying to obtain the gifts that quantify degree of affection for loved ones.  The relentless cacophony of beeps from the checkout scanner, petulant voices of children, sounds from high definition televisions demonstrating just how highly defined they are with continuous loops of family friendly animated comedies, the public announcement system announcing sporadically, plastic bags crinkling, shopping carts rattling and a seeming plethora of other sound combinations that would frighten or at least perturb the uninitiated.
A heavy-set man knocks over a stack of soda cans that appear to be “on sale.” The noise accompanying the crash barely punctuates the hubbub. Despite this, a store attendant waddles into the scene. The heavy-set man profusely apologizes.
“Really sir,” the attendant soothes. “It is not a problem. That time of the year you know.”
“Yeah,” a relieved laugh, and the man and the store attendant fall back on banter of incredibly detailed minutiae involving the town’s football team and its archenemy.
          The heavy-set man, although genuinely sorry for the accident, really needs to get back to his shopping so he thanks the attendant for her assistance and bustles away.
After a few seconds of wiping, spraying, mopping and drying, the mess appears to have been dealt with.
The store attendant is glancing about to see if she’s missed anything when a call from the public announcement system alerting the attendants of an altercation between several customers over a popular but scarce holiday gift diverts her attention.
        “It is amazing how something so big usually handles itself with such dexterity in the right environment. I reckon there is nothing quite as graceful as a shopper deftly wheeling a shopping cart through a throng of other frantic shoppers. The co-ordination, alacrity, the brief glances left and right in search of the next fix and a seemingly intuitive sense of what makes a good bargain…. it is uncanny. It is almost as if the inorganic shopping cart had nerves and is merely an evolved appendage.”
The green soda can that the attendant has forgotten rotates clumsily on its base, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. After a few seconds of clandestine adjustments it is face to face with a red, rather worn out looking soda can.
“How did you do that?” the green soda can inquires.
“Converse you mean?” the red can quips. “The geriatric attendant in charge of stocking and maintaining this aisle can’t afford health insurance. It has undoubtedly been years since she last had a medical examination. If she ever did, it would be much to her chagrin to be diagnosed with Alexia, a type of sensory aphasia that compromises literacy.”
  Green looks puzzled so the feels obliged to explain further.
“Due to her unconscious inability to accurately read things such as expiration dates I have been here a for quite a while. Just for how long precisely, I am no longer sure. I am probably one of the oldest items in this establishment.”
  “Surely someone must have pointed out the obvious to her?” the green soda can, unfamiliar with the role of interlocutor, counters feebly.
“Oh I am sure they do. Trouble is, by she never has a substantive point of view. She works alone. By the time she gets to me every can in this section appears obsolete. You’d think the worn out look I sport would have tipped her off. She should be bouncing her grandkids on her lap, painting, gossiping, shit, even barhopping. She is far too old to be cleaning up after teenagers.” Red sounds almost solicitous.
A slight pause. And then: “That means I’ll be gone soon then.”
“If some kid doesn’t nag his mother for you, or some frat boy does not smash you against his forehead to assert his masculinity, you might last until tomorrow morning.” Red’s tone is flat.
The aisle is, in a manner of speaking, silent for a while, save for the familiar sounds of a busy store.
After a while, as if unable to contain its curiosity, green ventures to ask, “ So what is it like?”
“Like?”
Another pause. Sigh. If only soda cans could gesticulate emotions. “What is it like being around them for so long?”
“At first my existence tethered between boredom and being terrified of being discovered. Eventually, the novelty of my circumstances faded and I started to listen. I have been here long enough to appreciate the uniqueness of the situation.”
“What do you mean?” the green can asks in a curious tone.
“Well, I’ve…seen things. Every sort comes through this aisle.  Everybody wants soda. Everybody.  I have been around since the ubiquitous chewing gum went out of fashion for these folks and the next annoying trend they picked up from this device they call “TV” is playing idly with their cell phones while getting updates about the breeding and adoption proclivities of beautiful people they will never know or meet. As such, I get to see things our healthier alternatives in the dairy or vegetable section could never even dream of. Why, Just the other day, I listened to two old timers argue enthusiastically about the apoptosis of public discourse in this particular part of the world and how symbols and their pervasive representation had just about rendered tangible organic human experiences awkward and apologetic. One of the men seemed to request clarification and the older gentleman provided their current activity as a demonstration. He had come out to the store to buy a calculator. His baffled wife asked him why one as relatively well off as he could not simply buy one online. He had pretended not to hear her, primarily because his response may have influenced the chances of her putting out that night. *Otherwise he would have retorted that he was going out because he was going to have one hell of a time buying one calculator. He wanted to walk across the street and feel the cold in his face. He wants to bump into strangers, have conversations, make light-hearted jokes about their hairdo and pet the dogs they are walking. He wanted to stop for a few seconds and listen to a crazy street preacher on a soapbox. He wanted to ogle a fine pair of women jogging, step in cold sludge for not watching where he was going and call yours truly up for coffee, and then wander into the store looking for a calculator.  You can’t get that online. The younger of the two laughed and said something that was cloaked by the public announcement system. By the time I was able to grasp the thread of their conversation they were talking about a particularly sophomoric film that distorts ideas by the philosopher Jean Baudrillard and how it merely obliquely illuminates the problems presented by urbanization. The older gentleman professed that the issue had in fact been recognized a lot earlier and treated a lot more seriously in the dark satirical 1976 script by Paddy Chayefsky. I was relatively young when I first passively made their acquaintance. I had not frame of reference so at that point I could only understand the words, not their meaning, implication and context. Now that I am considerably older I suspect they were onto something rather important.“*
Red pauses for a while, and silence (figuratively speaking) ensues as the clueless green soda can desperately attempts to absorb all this.
In that same dry morose tone Red comments,” Yesterday, there was this mother of several children chatting with a new “friend”. It seemed her means of getting by involved delivering progenies for the sake of child support. Incidentally, she also conducted business on the side. I overheard her mention to her friend how paying extra could-“
“Paid extra could wha-”
“Sh!” Red spits out.
The cans fall silent as a troupe of college boys storm down the aisle, opining passionately if not a little too violently about the mammary glands of a nascent movie star. They eventually migrate over to the aisle holding cigarettes.
“I don’t think I understand the things you are saying,” Green breaks their silence with. “If I were to try to carbonate over it, the assumption I would arrive at is that I have no past, no history, and as such no contextual frame of reference.”
Red laughs mirthlessly. “In a sense you are not unlike your prospective consumers.”
“Am I supposed to understand that?” Green is hurt and more than a little exasperated.
“No.” Apparently Red has no interest in concession.
“If there were ever a phrase that could be used to describe this particular culture at present, it would be synthesizer generation. The only way of life they are familiar with is one that has been artificially generated with almost no historical context. Try and imagine an entire population that was brought up with a passive acceptance of what to wear, eat, who to love, which convictions are to be held and to give as much value to a proselytized lifestyle as opposed to developing a physical one for itself. In this post-atomic social climate, there is a frightening nonchalance to reading that is causing it to exist without context. How can it evolve if it does not remember?
Rapid industrialization, while a great plus in improving their physical standard of living, is rendering the individual as dispensable as a used prophylactic. Their age is bearing witness to the emergence of euphemisms. Th-“
“Euphemisms? Green interrupts the verbal avalanche. “What is that?”
Red thinks about his response for a few seconds.
“Euphemisms are basically a way of saying certain less harshly. It is the substitution of a controversial phrase or word with something more diplomatic or amicable. A bowdlerization of a language if you will.  At first it seemed like a good idea but I have had time to think about it.”
“Maybe it is just me, but that euphemism thing does not sound like such a bad idea,” Green offers.
Red acquiesces, “It does not. But I have been wondering. I mean these words that are being censored exist for a reason. As ugly as they sound, and I have heard my share, they are used to express feelings. As cruel, poisonous, and unpleasant these feelings attitudes and views are, they exist nonetheless. If the language is sanitized and certain words are ostracized does this approach necessarily eradicate the feeling? Maybe it is just the archaic carbonated liquid within me that is the culprit for this eerie discomfort. Still, I feel as though euphemisms merely cloak attitudes and feelings and if certain attitudes, as evil sounding as they are, never find admission into public discourse the attitudes will merely lie dormant. They will simply fester inside in some cases even without the holder’s conscious realization until they can be passed on to the children or if the right set of circumstances trigger an explicit manifestation.”
Green seems confused and Red chuckles.
“Sorry about that. It is rather unlikely that you will comprehend any of that. In a sense it is as if I am conversing to you than with you. Besides, it is only just a theory.”
Green would have smiled. “Maybe if I ever got to be older like you, I would have the frame of reference required to understand these things you are telling me. I am a bit curious about these words you use. Words and their meaning seem to play a vital role in how you perceive things around you. Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.” Red waits patiently.
        “What…um…words would you say you hear more often these days?”
Red thinks about his response for a while. “I have been here long enough to recognize dead giveaways about a culture. Language is one tell. Sexuality is another. Language always gives the game away though.”
The cans pause as a customer stops, examines items close to green and shuffles on.
“If you were a bit older green, the dominant Zeitgeist you would recognize is complacency, a built in equanimity to bad news catalyzed by decades of staring at the tube and a lack of historical context because even less of them bother reading anymore unless it will advance their careers. To answer your query what I can say is that I have been here long enough to recognize the dead giveaways about a culture. Language is one tell. Sexuality is another. Language always gives the game away though.  The word that I hear the most these days now is “whatever”. I suppose even that is rather revealing.”
“Whatever?” Green asks nervously.
Red sighs and attempts something resembling a shrug but is only able to tilt for a second to the side.
      “Yet again, I suspect I am talking more at you than with you. I apologize. Not quite used to company you see.”
“What about the other cans?” Green inquires. “Wouldn’t they make just as bad interlocutors as I would?”
“No,” Red is almost wistful. “If you could see above you, you would notice that the other cans are attached together by some sort of plastic. I have puzzled over their habitual silence for quite a while now. So far, the best layman’s theory I can come up with is that in order to see things with some degree of objectivity, critical thinking and healthy skepticism, it is essential for one to step out of the preconceived notions and groups you are herded into and identify with. I stopped considering myself as more than just a brand or a commodity whose sole purpose is merely to provide a service a long time ago. You are different because by sheer luck you aren’t attached to a group. Perhaps, this is why you can hear the words and they cannot.”
Red is silent for a while. The din in the store appears to be steadily dwindling. The traffic is thinner as more buyers appear to be departing than arriving. An entire hour seems to go by as the store enters the graveyard hours of the night. The aisle is silent. The overall ambience of the store reduced to a sort of murmur.
A smart looking young girl walks into the aisle. She has her back to the cans. She stands incredibly still, giving the impression of concentrated attention. Red is curious about what commodity it is that holds her interest so. Its curiosity is quelled when the girl eventually changes her posture to reduce the tension from standing still for so long.
“What is she holding?” Green asks.
“They are called glasses or spectacles.” Red answers. “ They improve vision.”
The two cans watch as the girl peruses through various prescriptions.
“Maybe she is looking for a fresh perspective. A new way to look at things.”
Green’s tone hints at its exasperation. “Eh?”
“Oh it is nothing. Just another theory I have been musing on.”
“Well you might as well go ahead and tell me. It is not like we are running short on time.”
“Actually we are.” Red interjects. “Well you are. It is almost 2am. The pubs are emptying. Soon you will be encountering a different type of shopper.”
Green ponders over this.
Red is tentative. “Given the likelihood of what is about to happen to you, it really does not matter whether I tell you or not.”
“I’d rather if you told me. Even if only to impede the sense of doom that is rising within me.” Green gushes.
“Ok. The theory I have involves spectacles and perception. This aisle has had its fair share of some extremely young versions of these shoppers with their parents pointing to several items and nagging their parents to purchase them simply because the youngsters saw this item on TV. The theory is that everyone of their kind is born with vision. Not necessarily ocular. Just some way to interpret the world around them.  Because the world is a large one, spectacles are required. The problem for the youngsters is that their spectacles are constantly inundated with information and some of it is rather malicious and detrimental to their vision. When they finally grow up their perception of the world is incredibly skewed but because their spectacles have been tinted for so long their flawed perception is the only vision they have.  I would like to think that this young lady here has found the presence of mind to realize that is about time she had some fresh spectacles and has summed up the courage to do so.”     
“Ah.” The single syllable Green offers is flat.
“She is lucky. It must be harder to come to that realization the older one ge-”
“Sh!” Green mutters.
The two cans are so absorbed they fail to notice they group of young men. Intoxicated and bored, they exude belligerence. One of boys makes loud, blunt, explicit declarations about what he would like to do to the young girl to impress his friends. He is rewarded with bawdy laughter and another boy makes a disparaging remark about “female bookworms”. As the girl leaves the aisle, to the sound of even more malicious remarks and laughter, the alpha male of the group, as if to impress the receding girl, picks up Green, shakes it, holds the can so its base is on top his crotch and opens it. Even more laughter as the girl flees from the fountain of raw unadulterated masculinity supposedly erupting from the boy’s crotch.
With the girl gone, the boys grab a few snacks and leave the aisle. The store is rather quiet, which is not unusual this early in the morning.
The elderly aisle attendant wheels into the aisle with her bucket and mop.
   
*The scenario described the older gentleman is inspired by an interview of American writer Kurt Vonnegut by NOW’s Davis Brancaccio. http://www.pbs.org/now/arts/vonnegut.html
Here is short excerpt of the quote:
“Oh, she says, well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.”