Mind Over Matter

            When I arrived at the food bank on Thursday, September 22^nd, the delivery truck was backed up in the driveway. Since parking my bike in the usual place would cut through the unloading relay line, I locked it instead on the wrought iron fence across the street.

            The wrestler was holding court near the brick wall around the corner with an entourage of three smoking women (though as far as I can tell, he doesn’t smoke). The closest person who wasn’t smoking was a woman with white hair. I asked her who the last person in line was and she pointed to a grey haired man in a beige t-shirt and a blue baseball cap. I made sure I knew where he was the whole time I was waiting.

            A car pulled up with a bread delivery from St Francis Table. Some of the guys from the line-up walked over to help carry the bags into the food bank.

            The truck pulled out, so I moved down the driveway.

            I was on the last few pages of the French language tween book, “Klonk”, which I’d been reading all summer. It had taken me so long because most of my reading time had only been while waiting at the food bank. A guy with an arm cast was sitting over by the wall on the other side of the driveway. As usual, I was reading the book and looking up words in a French dictionary as I went along. The guy with the cast called out, “It must be hard to read two books at the same time!” I explained what I was doing.

            A few minutes later, he got up and walked over to a tree that was near where he’d been sitting. There was a strip of cardboard sitting across some of the branches. He began moving the cardboard with a stick, and at first I thought he was trying to remove the cardboard from the tree, until I realized that he was adjusting the cardboard’s position in relation to the movement of the sun so that the cardboard would cast a shadow onto him where he was sitting. Very clever.

            A group near the door were having a conversation about searing around children. A woman related that she’d heard a mother on the street tell her child to, “Shut the fuck up!” Joe, the manager, told them that he’d seen a mother hit her kid so hard that she fell into the street and got hit by a car.

            The same group later talked about male erectile dysfunction. The wrestler insisted that it’s just a matter of mind over matter, because he’s pushing sixty and he’s never had any problem. If he’s never had a problem then how does he know it’s a state- of-mind-based problem? One would have to have had the problem and conquered it with one’s mind in order to be able to have some credibility in making the claim that it’s a matter of attitude.

            I finally finished reading “Klonk”. It’s about an eleven-year-old boy with five adolescent siblings. He’s dreading becoming an adolescent because it’s obvious to him from observing his brothers and sisters that adolescence is a disease that makes one both ugly and insane. What the boy loves more than anything else is playing hockey, but then he breaks his leg during a game and winds up in a cast. While he is temporarily disabled though, none of his able friends have time for him. There is a permanently disabled boy in this class who everyone calls “Klonk” because no one can pronounce his real name. No one ever has time for Klonk. But one day the narrator sees Klonk disappear while reading a book. It compels him to approach Klonk later and they become friends. Klonk inspires the boy to start reading and loving books and that causes him to grow up to be a writer.

            I came back at 13:30 with the number 16.

            My helper was the tiny older woman from the Philippines. As I was giving her my number, another worker approached her to declare that she was, “Really tall!” “Yes!” she agreed jokingly, “I am!” Then he touched her in the chest and said, “Right here!” Then he added as if he thought there might be some misunderstanding, “In your heart!” “You think so?” Then Bruce came to ask, “Is this a kitchen meeting?” which seemed to help get things moving.

            From the top of the first set of shelves I took some raspberry Jello. There were two unmarked packages of jelly powder that she also encouraged me to take, so I did.

            Further down I took a box of energy bars made only from dates, coconut, almonds and cashews.

            She gave me a small can of chipotle peppers.

            As usual there were a few handfuls of packaged snacks, such as fruit gummies, date bars and fig bars. Among them though, I noticed later, were three individually wrapped tea bags of German fruit tea and another one of Second Cup rum tea.

            I took a bag of rice. There were no canned beans other than green string beans, but I took a can of those.

            There hasn’t been any canned tuna for the last few weeks, but I took a jar of peanut butter, even though it was the kind with sucrose. I thought I’d keep it in case I run out of natural peanut butter.

            She asked, “Do you want honey?” Of course I wanted honey. She put two handfuls of single serve containers into my bag, but when I got it home I saw that it was honey mustard sauce. It was too good to be true. I wonder if she really thought it was honey.

            Finally, from the regular shelves I took a package of honey-almond Cheerios.

            Across the aisle in the cold goods section there was a choice between some kind of yogourt with candy on top and two packages each of Astro blueberry and strawberry yogourt. I took the Astro.

            There was a choice between a container of frozen ground chicken and a package of bologna. I took the chicken, which I’d earlier heard a woman speak about in the line-up. She’d said she could figure out what it was because it was more the texture of pate than ground meat. It’s no good for burgers unless one mixes it with breadcrumbs, but it wouldn’t have all of the additives that one would get from bologna.

            From the bread section I just took a loaf of un-sliced seed bread.

            The vegetable lady gave me a red pepper, two apples, seven potatoes, five gnarly carrots, two cho-chos, two onions and a bunch of kale. Then she looked at me curiously and declared, “You’re a very quiet man!” There are several instances that I can think of in which I’m not quiet, but I just said, “Not when I’m singing.” “You’re a singer?” Maybe it was a stretch, but I nodded. “Rock?” I shrugged and answered, “Just my own stuff.”

            I went for a bike ride in the late afternoon. I figured that I might as well take advantage of the daylight while I can on nice Thursdays and Saturdays, since it’s going to get too dark soon for me to take any long trips to explore the east end.

            At Huron and Bloor a young woman was wearing ten-centimetre stilettos but wearing cut-offs, a tank top and a backpack. It looked okay from an ogler’s perspective, but it’s probably a fashion faux pas.

            At Sherbourne and Bloor, a young man standing on the sidewalk exclaimed to the young woman sitting cross-legged on the concrete, “Man! My nose is fuckin burning!” Gee, I wonder why his nose was burning.

            I rode to O’Connor and Glebemount while having had a strong urge to pee for several blocks before that. I was really holding myself as I made it for the Starbucks in Old East York Village.

            Once relieved, I went down Coxwell to the Danforth.

            At Pape, the conga drummer was there again with his toddler in the stroller. The boy was encouraging his father to play and shouting, “Bang! Bang!” Then when he started to play the child kicked his legs happily to the rhythm.