2 - the plastic bag

I sat on the top bunk of the cell and looked out the window into the sunshine and trees. A plastic bag danced past, pushed along by the wind, until it crashed into the concrete fence.

Yes, of course I thought of the scene in the movie ‘American Beauty’
when the teenage kid shows his favorite piece of video,
and it’s a plastic bag being blown around in the wind,
and we all thought it was so profound,
and then the film won lots of awards,
and the plastic bag became a visual cliche.




But I must tell you, in this moment of sitting in jail,
not having eaten,
changed clothes,
washed,
been able to see (glasses smashed),
eaten more than a piece of bread, in several days,

AND having had the deaths of two young women rip through everything that ever made sense in my life,
this particular plastic bag was pretty fucking profound.