AT A MALL IN SCRANTON, PA

We went to a mall. I bought some shoes.

This bit is loosely patterned after an Allen Ginsburg poem in which he imagines Walt Whitman shopping in a modern day grocery store. (Ginsburg's bit is entitled, suprisingly, "A Supermarket in California." I highly recommend it; my second favorite Ginsburg piece, after "Howl.") We were up in the wilds of Pennsylvania for a family reunion, and, as a break in the action, had headed to the nearest major town, Scranton, to go see a movie. (We saw "The Perfect Storm." I'd have liked it better if they hadn't tried to turn Billy Tyne into Cicero.) Since the theater was next to the mall, I went in to buy a new pair of shoes. The place just struck me: it had to be 20 years old, and had this weird sort of antique Mod look. I began to imagine being there with Lawrence Ferlinghetti - whom, let the record show, I have never met and am not on a first name basis with - based on his poem "Director of Alienation" (also highly recommended, from the book Who Are We Now?, also to be found in the collection Wild Dreams of a New Beginning). (Also for the record, I did not slide down the escalators bare-assed.) While scrambling around for something to write on (eventually I settled - brace yourselves - on a Winnie the Pooh refrigerator magnet note pad) I saw a display in the resident record store for The Marshall Mathers LP. (Again for the record, I hadn't heard it and didn't know if it was as bad as everyone was saying, but I was pissed off because some idiot at Rolling Stone had the temerity to compare the twerp to Lenny Bruce. Since then, I've reached the following conclusion: Eminem was a huge Music Industry inside joke, and maybe it was funny in some way to see him singing the song "Stan," with Faggot Emeritus Elton John, but I, for one, still don't get it.) The food court was on another level. Had I had another ten minutes to search, I'd have been fed. Recently a reader from Scranton posted a note to inform me that there are two malls in Scranton, and they both have food courts. But, as Hemingway noted, in his memorable book A Travelling Picnic, hunger, frustration and inspiration often go hand in hand in hand.

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