Of a few church visits one will usually find the back aisles all empty.
So I took the third from the back, right along the main walkway. It was the type of church with a half-circle about it, and the rows form more of a trapezoid than anything else. High ceilings. Medium sized, I suppose. A beige cement fountain to greet you outside, with some Greek influence for pillars hovering around, hanging mint vines.
They transmit the vines in with the mellow dark green carpet. Acting as contrast against the flits of amber glass falling down lit windows.
When you’re positioned so far away, you’ll find yourself more an observer than a part of any ceremony. You aren’t actually there. And you’ll forget the words that come in intervals, signals to remind you that you’re supposed to be with them. The infrequent visits naturally justify why you mumble at best.
So this is what they mean by going through the motions. Fumbling through a songbook to keep up even though you’re already resigned from being there.
I just don’t see why I need to be here. Eyes shift along all the other seats and you see the devoted with their devotees positioned nicely and snug. In the aftermath the lobby is filled with happy chatter.
I’m not sure what causes this distance! Likely self-imposed. But every time I went to church I felt hollower afterward. It felt like a tithe to the social circles around the place rather than its advertised function. All the songs that echo throughout the vast insides culminates into a noise that has no name.
Not as though I ever was a stamped member though. It was a formality from the beginning. The same shuffle one finds through public schooling, just with a promise of salvation attached – although such promises may be found in schooling too. A salvation of a proper place in society.
If I ever go again, I’ll sit in the same place. No matter the church. And I’ll wait for the chariots to burst through, to scatter some sparkles of the other world we’re singing away from. To where the volume of light rapidly flashes in, and the vision turns all glossy since the stained glass portraits transpose onto your iris. Break us off the ground, let us look over that cement fountain below. And ascend to see the roads of ant-cars hurry to the next destination.
Instead I find myself in the convenience store aisle, looking over sugar-free snacks in a stint of delusion that somehow sugar-free doesn’t come with its own quandaries. But I’ve got to manage this destructive part of myself somehow, is what I whisper.
Maybe waltz around the back to the chip aisle. Some chocolate covered raisins positioned between feels almost like a intervention; this is what I need, but then eventually nothing. It is funny to walk out of a convenience store empty-handed, the clerk staring you down as though you would ever bother to steal anything.
Now I’m in the aisle of the library with a bunch of books most likely never read. Pull out one to reveal the dated cover for a target demographic of the 2000s. Where’s the author now?
So the aisles of faculty buildings careen around. Oddly transposed from the schools of past, whether high school or younger. Groups of backpack equipped personnel fade in and out. Muffled footsteps on perforated frilly carpet, and offices you would never go inside because you know there’s nothing to ask nor say. The assignments are rather self-evident. Of the few times one bothers to step in, it is a stammer of a conversation. Why?
So I am in a grocery store aisle, looking over all the processed food. It feels strange to call it food, akin to clicking your tongue to mimic a bird call. The brightly labeled packaging can either entice or drift away any notions of purchase. I guess that’s the marketer’s version of “going in for the kill”. The cereal section has a bunch of big eyes to bring in unsuspecting children, tugging on a pant and asking for this one. Ladled with sugar. How did they pull off the notion that a Pop Tart is a breakfast food, let alone a food?
In the amusement park line, and it shifts into three separate aisles for boarding. Waiting for 30 minutes to finally sit down and fly around. But as the split commences, which one will you take? It seems you’re breaking away from those you took this line with. They smile and assure you’ll see them afterward. Will you see them again? So many things we take for granted.
All of this waiting and loitering. What are you waiting for?