Mirages
Issue 9: Just some things I may or may not have seen this week (+ AI-generated visual aids)
Outside the supermarket, a man asks Pavan and I whether we want to buy any “gear”. We tell him that we’re good thanks and keep walking. Once we’re a little distance away, I turn to Pavan and ask: “Was that man eating dog food from a can with a deodorant stick?”
“No,” says Pavan. “It’s just not possible.”
The image is clear in my mind: that man, holding a salmon-orange can of dog food in one hand and a white deodorant stick in the other. Flecks of meat cling to the lid of the deodorant. He brings it to his mouth, sucks it clean. The meat is less like tinned fish and more like… dog food. The spoon is less like a spoon and more like… a deodorant stick. I try to rearrange the image into something that makes more sense, but no matter how I look at it, I still see a man eating dog food with a stick of deodorant.
“What else could it have been?” I ask. Pavan just shrugs, helpless. It could have been cat food, I suppose.
Pavan and I have decided to call incidents like these mirages. Things that look real, sound real, seem real, but can’t possibly be real. We’re growing used to them.
The next day we go to Taco Bell and decide to sit in. I try to use the bathroom, but it’s occupied. I wait while whoever is inside turns the taps on, then off, then on again. I wait and wait. After a good fifteen minutes or so, a man comes out with a wet chihuahua.
“Sorry,” he says. “We had to wash her.”
Soon after, a woman walks out too. She doesn’t look at the man, just walks past to wait by the Taco Bell counter. The man walks outside.
“He said they were washing their dog,” I tell Pavan.
“Come on,” says Pavan. “They were obviously having sex.”
His explanation makes the most sense. More sense, at least, than communally bathing a chihuahua in a Taco Bell bathroom. Still, it doesn’t explain why the dog was wet.
“I think that’s why the U.S. is such an inspiring place to be,” Pavan says on the walk home. He’s on a patriotic bend at the moment. “Everyone’s just doing their own thing. People innovate. Surprise you. You don’t get that as much back home.”
“You mean like eating dog food with deodorant?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says. “This place just fosters a more creative mindset.”
We turn down the alleyway towards the back of our house. Someone’s set up a black faux-leather couch in the middle. It’s sun-cracked, stuffing spilling out like guts. Lounging on the sofa is a blonde woman in a black and white bikini. She’s rubbing suntan lotion over her legs.
She’s a long shot from the strangest (or even nudest) thing I’ve seen in that alleyway. She’s almost normal. Yet, somehow, she’s my favourite mirage of the week.
Please enjoy the AI generated images of this week’s mirages + let me know about the tiny weird things that have popped up in your life this week. <3