Supermarket surrealism

But these claims make the pretentious folk mad. \n"Surrealism is an artistic movement," such scholars will say, quoting Encyclopedia Britannica: "It emerged from Dadaism with the goal of erasing all constraints on the mind and achieving unrestrained expression of subconscious thought." Then, with a haughty chuckle, they will inform you that your milkshake could hardly be surreal.\nI have no mind to argue with such intelligence. Yet, there are some things I just can't quite describe without that word -- the Waffle House, for instance, and the concept of tanning beds -- but most consistently, the grocery store.\nArtistic movements aside, www.dictionary.com defines "surreal" as "having an oddly dreamlike quality," and "characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtapositions." In that case, I think the grocery store is most certainly surreal. \nThe stark glow of fluorescent lighting makes for an odd perception of any room. But pair that with the gentle hum of popular-music-gone-Muzak, dot it with an unending string of bleeps from a cavalcade of cash registers, and you've got one dreamlike atmosphere. It doesn't resemble any reality I know, anyway.\nLook around your local Marsh, and tell me you can find a single square inch that is not filled with some type of fantastic imagery. Bright rows of cereal boxes, stacks of canned yams, pyramids of bottled soft drinks, fabric softeners, brownie mixes, juice boxes -- all are competing for the looker's attention. Yards of produce are up for squeezing and prodding and other inspection. Racks of sensational newspapers beg shoppers to read about affairs between film stars and Teletubbies. It's a visual explosion.\nAs for the incongruous juxtapositions, they are plenty. Not only are certain products illogically placed next to others, some don't even belong in a grocery store in the first place. For example, the bin of tube socks that is sometimes at the end of the personal hygiene aisle or the box of posters of baby raccoons I once saw next to a display of clearanced mouthwash. There is a blood pressure machine next to the bananas, and, quite often, a stray bird in the rafters. When Allen Ginsberg suggests via prose that he might have spotted Garcia Lorca down by the watermelons, I'm almost inclined to believe him.\n Moving beyond definition, sometimes it's simply the sheer innovation that makes me feel like grocery stores are on a slightly different plane of existence. They've got those U-Scan machines that have the impressive ability to offer a social-free shopping experience. They've got that amazing absorbent powder that the grocery store custodian can pour on a puddle of capsized milk and enable him to actually sweep up a liquid spill. I have yet to visit any other earthly institution that could employ such technology in addition to staying open 24 hours a day. \nTo those staunch academics with strict vocabularies, grocery stores and surrealism may never be accurately paired. But I stand by my assertion. While I can accept "surreal" as a misused descriptor for most things, supermarket just can't be one of them. If Salvador Dali had ever immortalized a Kroger, he wouldn't have had to change a thing.