“Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is my friends,
then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze
and have a ball
If that’s all there is.”

                Jerry Leiber & Mike Stoller

I had an existentialist crisis at the Shoprite today.  I thought I’d be clever and go grocery shopping at noon, before my Sunday visit with Mom, but it was a terrible mistake.  Usually I shop after the visit, at around 5:00 p.m. and it’s less crowded, almost bearable.  Like Linnnn and many other OSers, I assume, I do not enjoy the act of procuring groceries.  Maybe my inner hunter-gatherer was manifesting itself and longed for the days when humans didn’t go to the gym to sweat.  Every day involved physical struggles, hardships and simple, hard-won rewards that most of us cannot conceive of.

Weekends are the worst time at Shoprite.  I used to go on weekday evenings after work; earlier in the week was best.  Consumers were much mellower, almost devil-may-care. 

Noon on Sundays at Shoprite is sheer hell.  Carts weaving in and out and around me, an elderly man in a khaki jacket shoved me from behind, a middle-aged woman shoved me from in front, a large 20-something woman with her angry-faced infant in the shopping cart passed me in the kosher food aisle.  The baby’s face metamorphosed into a devil with fangs.  I felt like Natalie Portman in Black Swan, utterly paranoid.  I wanted to sprout wings and fly far, far away.  What had I done to deserve this?

At a certain point, I felt I had left my body and was hovering near the phosphorescent lights, peering down upon the rushing, angry masses  of suburbia, pushing and shoving for that last box of Rice-a-Roni on sale or the Ragu Pasta Sauce for $1.99.  I hated them all.  My hands started to shake and grow clammy, I broke into a cold sweat; my heart palpitated.  Why hadn't I brought that bottle of Klonopin?  I wondered, why do I live in suburbia?  I never wanted to, never wanted to work a full-time office job, especially not as a legal secretary.  Hell, I got a “D” in typing class in high school.  The best thing about mastering typing, however, was being able to write faster, but that’s another story.

I made it home, and my husband Lorin had a glass of coke waiting for me and unloaded the car.  I sat in the backyard with my cats and ate a sandwich and drank the coke: I needed blood sugar, and I needed to chill.

“At least in Astoria and Washington Heights, you know if they hate you,” I said.  “Here, they smile at you but then they talk about you behind your back.”

I guess I wasn’t meant for the suburbs.  I’m feeling in a rut, like my life is at a standstill.  Maybe it’s turning 50 last September that broke me.  I AM A BABY BOOMER (a tween?)!  I DESERVE TO DIE, according to Robert Crook, so why am I complaining?  I am hyper-critical of everything I have done and have not done.  I have regrets, but I am moving forward.  I’m meeting with my director/writer/acting coach friend in less than 2 weeks to resume work on my one-woman show.  I will return to performing, my old love.

But today I am feeling pointless, not knowing why I am here on planet earth, what difference I am making to the world at large.  Do I have any real value?  I am not where I expected to be at this age.  In my 20s, I was an activist, ready and eager to change the world.  In my 30s, I still felt sassy and cool.  In my 40s, I started to wonder if all I was was my mother’s unwitting savior.  Now, I feel adrift at sea.  I long for something new, exciting, to transport me and awaken me, but ultimately, I know that must come from within.  Musings for a Sunday evening.  Tomorrow will surely be a brighter day.

Peggy Lee sums my feelings up best in her signature song: