Slip sliding away...

I bought my week's groceries this Tuesday afternoon. As I've said, it's a nice time. The store isn't too full and it's empty of ambitious types--folks with fistfuls of coupons, ready to elbow you in the gut for the weekend's loss-leader. During the week, it's full of distracted people like me--freelancers and contractors jabbering on their cell phones--plus a few ancient souls musing in the soup aisle with their caregivers.

As usual I had my list, together with my coupons, so I prowled the aisles hissing, exclaiming, and muttering at the prices. The carton of cat food I get for my five cats had shot up $3 in price--about a third more. Milk was close to $5 a gallon, while eggs ranged from $3.69 a carton to $2.59. The price of nearly everything on my list had increased since last week. Today is late Wednesday, the following day, and I bet prices have jumped again.

Recently, a friend of mine called from Phoenix and remarked, "They're having food riots in Haiti."
"Well, they're about to have one in Albertson's," I said testily. "That whole store can line up and kiss my ass before I'll pay $2.50 for a bell pepper."

While shopping yesterday, I thought about my writing teacher, Theresa deKerpely, and the time she told about the fall of Pest (now Budapest) during WWII. She said, "We would run out during the day and buy anything--shoes and onions, or combs and bread--it didn't matter, because we knew the price would double by the next day."

And then, I remembered my father's WWII story, the one about his being in Beijing just before that city fell too. "People were pushing wheelbarrows full of money, dollface," he told me. "That's how little it was worth."

Instantly, I was flooded with images of Albertson's shoppers pushing wheelbarrows brimming with devalued US dollars, attempting to buy onions and combs before prices skyrocket. In my rational mind, I don't think it'll happen, but I don't think it's impossible. A couple of years ago, the very notion would have seemed crazy. It doesn't now.

And a couple of years ago, I was lurking in blogs, busily outraged at national and world events, although nothing in my own life had altered much. My grocery bills stayed about the same month to month, and gas increased a bit, then fell. It was harder for me to charge my hourly free-lance rate but, overall, my life was unremarkable.

Lately I have the sense of events moving quickly, dipping down, and touching us. All of us. It's one of those times. After I'd published an article about the sixties, a reader told me, "None of that political stuff ever happened to me. I mean I was aware of certain things, but it didn't have anything to do with me."

Me, I think history is a big bird soaring high above us, noticed by very few. But there are times when the bird dips down, allows a wing to brush us, and sends our collective fate sailing in new directions.

I think the big bird is flying low right now.
I feel a feather touching my cheek, oh so softly.

I wonder if you do too.