In this episode, we are sitting in a warm,
sunlit room with our eyes closed. The camera
pans around to show us motionless. We sit.
We don’t say anything. The only sound
is the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional
grumbling stomach. The cameraman gets bored
and starts to zoom in and out on a white ribbon,
a stray gray hair, a pimple on someone’s cheek.
Somewhere a producer is shouting, “Quick, go
to a commercial! Who’s idea was this? A bunch
of meditators?” He spills his coffee on his tie.
After a man tries to sell swabs that whiten teeth
and a wrinkle-less woman promises a spotless
germfree toilet, the show resumes and we
are still sitting here, eyes closed. All around America,
hands are fumbling for the remotes. But somewhere,
a woman with two young fighting children
and a leaking roof and thin walls in her cold apartment
is standing in front of her small screen, riveted in
disbelief, wondering just how she might
manage to find herself someday on a show like that.