Break Minutes

30-minute: I like the peace at this little picnic table near the landscape of scattered purple and pink flowers planted around the parking lot.

25-minute: As baggers, we are given the freedom of two breaks for every 8-hour shift: one half hour, and the other fifteen minutes to eat, to stretch, to socialize, or veg on the Internet or on-playing television in the break room.

5-minute: After I stretched at the humdrum sound of an ongoing weed wacker, I sat on the curbside and watched a man shave away the poked out branches in his front garden. He was meticulous. I'm assuming he has been doing this for quite a while since he was only three quarters complete and just this last section took near 20-minutes. When he finished, the bush walled off the street in a soft curved rectangle; it took the same shape of the top of his head. Next to this house, overgrown shrubs protrude wildly. Nature and time took more than twice as long to shape this magnificent creation. Time is funny and how we choose to spend it. Would I take hours to shape a shrub, or let it grow and take my minutes elsewhere? Because in the end, isn't it all the same?

4-minute: I'm still sitting on the curb side of this supermarket parking lot as the last of my break minutes shave away like those branches falling to the ground. I'm sitting here watching people come in and out with their shopping lists and frantic attitude of "I need" for items of no significance but pure indulgence. An entitled attitude to get their needs satisfied fast even if it may sacrifice the connections and interactions of the faceless serving them.

3-minute: Time. This reminded me of the tall man that irritably waited for the lady in front to return with her forgotten item. He kept shaking his head and cursed at her under his breath. When his turn opened up, he bellowed, "I was about to leave. My time is far too valuable to be wasted on waiting." I nodded at him and smiled my fake smile to pass the time.

2-minute: Time. I continue to watch the people with the right of way to enter and I ask, "What's the point?" What's the point to ALL this? And it may take me the rest of my short-lived moment of peace to get up and see the world otherwise, so I can return with a smile without falling into a deep emptiness and yell at the faceless creatures of greed, "WHAT'S THE POINT!"

1-minute: Time. How do we choose to make great use of it? As I stand behind the booth, my time is filled like the bags - packed from one insignificant object to another, after another and another. My time is challenged to please pack light,

to please pack with an even weight,
to damnnit to pack without crushing,
without melting,
without freezing the other insignificant objects,
and I pack from one insignificant object to another,
after another and another,
minute by minute,
day by day -

where is my time shaving off to shape?

Yielding to Baggers

As I had mentioned before, there is not a neighborhood without streets converging to what is called roundabouts, or rotaries. It is literally a giant circular formation paved around a man-made landscape of trees or bushes. The right way to master the art of rotaries is to to yield to on-coming cars until a break, ease into the movement naturally and exit when appropriate.

Purpose of rotaries

There's a hierarchy in roundabouts. First, you are a yielder and then with time and seniority, you earn the right of way. If only life can be so determined and expected. But in life, one may not necessarily have the chances to live out both. You are either a person that yields, or a person with the right of way. Some people are born into it and some people move toward it. Not necessarily in that order.

Baggers are definitely yielders, waiting one day to hold the prestige of cashier.

One day, one day.