Copyright © 2021 byAnthony John Udchitz VII.All rights reserved.

Allen Ginsberg.A Supermarket in California.Collected Poems 1947-1980.

The book cover is a vintage photograph of a Supermarket in California in the 1950’s when Ginsberg wrote this poem. Some of the emotions of Ginsberg’s poem help set the mood stage for some of my emotions about Shae-Lynn. About extremely emotional experiences that I just couldn’t seem to understand. I read Ginsberg’s poem when I was still a young man but I forgot all about it until I saw Shae-Lynn. At first realizing that this was something very hard for me to understand, but her gift, was for me to understand it now. Should I be grateful to herbecause of that? What will I cherish now? What will I remember now?

I have written about the mysticism of food and starvation before but it was about the starvation of someone else, about the degrees of difference between the nature of physical reality and the nature of ultimate reality. That story was about the starvation of Lady Mori in her love for the Zen Master Ikkyu Shojun. That was a story about the loveof a woman for a man, and this is a story about the love of a man for a woman. About my starvation now.

We are what we eat and despite the paramount importance of food in our daily lives very little creative writing has been done about the importance of grocery shopping, other than the importance of making shopping lists, or women writing about the meaning of grocery shopping with their Mothers, about the joy of shopping alone when their Mothers were still alive to give them shopping advice, and shopping alone after their Mothers were dead. Men don’t usually write about grocery shopping at all, they write Cookbooks instead. Ginsberg and I seem to be the only ones who wanted to explore the prose poetry of grocery shopping. We differ in that Ginsberg was shopping for the meaning of images and I was shopping for the meaning of Lady Galaxy. Both are forms of spiritual nourishment and spiritual anguish.

I always get very hungry when I think about Shae-Lynn, but I don’t want something to eat, I want to look at the stars in the sky. I want to look at the Galaxy instead. Shae-Lynn’s eyes have a face all of their own, and when she wears a mask at work when she works part-time at the grocery supermarket to protect herself from Covid-19, just the sight of just her eyes alone is something that I just can’t describe, except to say that it somehow adds more stars to the sky. Seeing her wearing a mask is the only way that I can see her now.

I am from a time that still remembers what they were doing on the days that they heard something that was very important to them. I was in a grocery store when I got the cellphone call and heard that my Father was dead. I remember that it was a long time before I wanted to eat again, this is despite understanding that the older you get, the harder it becomes to find something that you want to eat. I am very sure that there are so many more stories like this. I am also very sure that there are so many stories about the romance of people finding their true loves in grocery stores. If you found your soul mate, your true love, in a grocery store would that make both the future of your love and life together, and eating together, more important? Is that part of the romance of food? There are also so many common stories about couples who have been together for many years and when one of the partners dies, about the remaining partner starving to death after their mate is gone. We are what we eat means that it is just as important that we are what we love.

I am old enough to ask myself not where the love in my heart has gone, but to only ask myself why it has gone, and where it has gone? Has the love in my heart just become a space inside of me looking for someone to rent?

These days I only get to see Shae-Lynn when she is at work sometimes and I only buy groceries when she is there. Even then I don’t buy that much or stock up on food for when she isn’t there, and I often become very hungry, very starving, for the sight of her. I always wait in the background for all of the other customers to go

through her check-out so that I can talk to her for a few minutes. In Zen Buddhism there is a Koan about a man sitting on the edge of a river and still dying from thirst and I am going into a grocery store and still dying from hunger. That’s an emotion that’s very hard to experience, very important to describe, because the nature of reality is mostly experience and description. How do the struggles of everything else exist in this equation? I have heard it said that the Universe itself is just an emotion, I also remembered that when I saw Shae-Lynn.

The Zen Master Ikkyu Sojun and Lady Mori.Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1481) was a Japanese Zen Master of the Muromachi Period. In his old age Ikkyu fell in love with a very beautiful young singer whom he called Lady Mori. They became lovers in 1471. Lady Mori died before Ikkyu died and he wrote about their relationship together. The Onin War was a national Civil War in Japan that lasted from 1467-1477. As if the Onin War wasn’t destructive enough in itself the entire period was accompanied by truly catastrophic weather events that produced a great famine throughout most of Japan. The death toll from starvation was beyond description. Lady Mori starved to death right in front of Ikkyu’s eyes and he allowed it to happen. Lady Mori loved him so much that she wouldn’t eat any of what little food they could get because she wanted Ikkyu to survive. Why didn’t he try to do something about this? He certainly did something about it after she was dead because he survived the famine and went on to live for many years after that. What was so wrong with his emotions about her? Is this a question that I should be asking myself?

The Zen Master Anthony Udchitz and Shae-Lynn Lady Galaxy.Shae-Lynn Lady Galaxy if you and I were together back in time in the great famine of the Onin War then I know that I would have starved to death right in front of your eyes so that you could survive. I wouldn’t have made you pay the price for what I couldn’t describe.

Japanese Love Poetry.My translation from the Kojiki Kayo.In the grass field atSagami, the firesburned, the fires...andyou stood there amongthe flames and toldme that you loved me.This poem was written by a woman.