Apocalypse Dreams While Cashiering at Wild Oats

1:18 PM – Apocalypse Now??

I don’t think the gods want me to post my knowledge of the impending apocalypse, because this is the second time I’ve had to type this…

I’ve recently had 2 dreams involving the apocalypse.

In the first, I somehow knew it was the end of the world. It was also Christmas.

(This does not surprise me.)

I was wandering wet streets well-lit by Christmas lights and decorations. I roamed in and out of various storefronts and cafes, and although all the doors were open, nobody was manning the stores. I didn’t see another human anywhere. I was completely alone.

A few nights later, I dreamt I was at my parents’ house in Cave Creek. My family (Erin, mom, and dad) were gathered in the living room watching in amazement and horror as the sky turned black outside these huge windows. My mom suddenly had trouble breathing. Large objects, which I can only describe as giant dandelion thingers, started falling from the clouds like spears. Somehow I knew these creepy things were poisonous and that we were under attack. Thats when I started having trouble breathing too. I could feel myself slipping out of consciousness. It was a strange feeling.

I think I had another dream last night, but can’t remember it now.

This past weekend, I attended my first/last/only Wild Oats holiday party. Over the 3 Christmases that I’ve worked for the company, this is the first time the store I’ve worked at did anything for the employees, not counting the time we had Mexican food catered to the back room receiving area at Henry’s and I ate it cold from the cubby under my register cuz I was the only cashier and couldn’t get away. I won an an inflatable raft in the raffle a leftover from a promotional display, no doubt), complete with oars. It seems fitting to me that my parting gift from Wild Oats would be a fucking floaty. I start at Sprouts on Tuesday.

Source, my Myspace blog post, 2007:

Suzy Eynon

3 Questions for Suzy

What was your process for creating this work?

I’d saved copies of my defunct MySpace blog posts. The text was bright purple Courier New against a black background. The posts were confessional, and some contained photographs I’d taken to accompany the entries, artifacts of a specific Internet time and a specific time in my life. Some of the posts were only me complaining so I tried to pick a post which addressed more universal themes, and cut out any words or lines that derailed the main idea.

What is the significance of the form you chose?

I’d been curious about erasure poetry because I’m not great with starting a poem from a blank page. I’m wordy and I end up with prose every time. But removing excess from an existing work feels different, especially when the source document is my work. I enjoyed working with words written by a version of myself from seventeen years ago, looking for the real story in her confessions.

What is the significance of this work to you?

I was struck as I read the source posts by how angry my voice was at that time. But of course I was angry. I was working this public job in retail as a shy person, a job I lost when the store closed, while going through a break-up and moving back home because I couldn’t afford to live on my own. Re-reading my old words, I feel for this person. I hope the piece shows humor alongside the darkness, because another thing I thought while reading was that the scenarios were funny, too.

Suzy Eynon is a writer from Arizona. She has an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University. Her work has appeared in X-R-A-Y, South Dakota Review, Rejection Letters, Variant Lit, Monkeybicycle, and elsewhere. She lives in Seattle.

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