7.23PM - 2006-02-23
chinese baby
Dear Chinese baby whose parents own the donut shop, what exactly was it you did in a past life to deserve this? What historic sequence of noble acts landed your golden face right here, inches away from these coveted sweets? What prevenient sacrifice merited this tour of duty -- assigned to a samsaric way-station stocked full with maple bars and frosted crullers and outfitted with a tiny red stool from which one might observe the morning rush as it ebbs and flows beyond the glass display case? Laborers with yesterday's plaster flecked on their sleeves, hung-over Korean businessmen, bus stop hustlers spreading out change for a single smoke; how do we all look from your side of that sugar-dusted partition? I remember your first appearance here two years ago -- when your lovely mom used to feed you back by the big oven. How good was that? Washing down warm apple spoonfuls of bear-claw filling with a stout tug of breast milk as dad cracked open a fresh bucket of candy sprinkles...
C'mon Chinese baby, spill it -- your past life secret. Were you a blackout drunk who hurt everyone who cared for you and squandered your every advantage in the vague pursuit of an art that amounted, at the end of the day, to little more than the arch commodification of a bourgeois sentiment greater men might never deign worthy of consideration?
No?
I'm sorry to hear that.
