After too much rain from a dark glowering sky, we'd gone for a flu shot. For only 50 cents, Susan would bag a Santa hat.

We parked in the only space, encroached by a man sitting on the sidewalk, his feet planted over the curb. With raving eyes no doubt deranged, he was deep into a dispute with his demon. A table knife flashed, rounded at the tip, which he waved in vague circles. But for some reason our arrival scared him off.

This odd prelude is not entirely out of place. Just recall Beethoven's Dit, Dit, Dit, Dum! For good measure throw in a used oil filter, to give it texture. There's the beauty!

She brightened up Walgreens considerably, wearing the Santa hat. That red brim bobbing through fluorescent dunes of lipstick, Tami Flu, athlete's foot powder. Trust your inner eye. Think of Chekhov's Cherry Orchard, blossoms and butterflies. All the media images shoved in our face, all deposed. For just 50 cents.

So let's push off. Picture the Larsen ice shelf shlepping out to sea. Our mind becoming centerless. Eddies swirling out. Big Bee and the backyard birds, summer's glory, all receding. The Arctic circle gone. Melted? The truth without thorns? well . . . a very deep satisfaction is not possible in a hallowed log.

Past Chekhov’s orchard we go. There really were, once upon a time in our Valley of the Heart's Delight, acres of apricot groves that needed harrowing, raking, and being dressed smooth to leave a vast soft mattress. Which was raped by Silicon Valley. Days and warm nights usurped by renegade shopping carts with wobbly wheels, that guy with demon eyes.

In the kid's shopping seat, sticking up out of a little leg hole, was a disclaimer for possible side effects. Sign it. Don't read the fine print, which will blur the inner eye, plug Beethoven's ear. Instead find the inner thermos and a cup of coffee so welcome in this weather. Between lifting the cup and that first sip while watching, where did it go?

Follow the trail of sale signs back through Walgreen's labyrinth to the checkout counter. Find the licorice and menthol cough drops, think Go stones, to be played one at a time and, “please, Br'er Fox, don't fling me in dat brier patch.” Vigor is half the game. Place one firmly on the counter.

Truth is thornless. The automatic door swings open.