Sitting in the best Asian bistro I've ever been to in the early evening with the sun at my back and we talk about the ghetto. The tempura is amazing; the soy is so salty and tangy in my mouth that the allergies come on slow; but we talk of a woman on NPR as I imagine people in the city do. She told those reporters about her life; her two children and the one she is expecting; of leaving the ghetto and living on welfare and the struggle (and eventual failure) to achieve her G.E.D. She was a sad, poor woman, who was so relieved to find her petty minimal-wage job at the grocery store; and that was a story of triumph. I sat and wondered if she would ever get to try good Asian food; The Kung Pao chicken with poultry so supple it simply seems to come apart on your tongue and the celery still crisp but marinated in the hoisin sauce that it cracks on your teeth. Would she ever leave that home? Would any of her children be the brilliant mind that brought a cure for cancer? Maybe not. But I was then there, and I was not her and I enjoyed the meal. When I came out the sun was gone but it was still light, and the horizon was blue-black against the pale orange.

Standing in a Wal-Mart at twilight and I feel sick to my stomach after just walking in for a moment. The despair can seep into you just walking through the parking lot; the dead and dying cars with their rust spots and dirty exhaust that rises in those sickly gray-brown clouds. But then you go in, and a whole new world of misery encroaches upon the mind.

The clerks are older women mostly; far too old to be working, or should be working. People who have seen history; who went from records to tapes and now CDs and mp3s; from the typewriter to the personal digital assistant, from then to now. Women whose eyes are old and tired and who should be resting. But those are the employees, paid just above minimum wage to endure the fluorescent lights. An older black man in one of those automatic chairs with his cane hanging off the side comes out of the children’s clothing aisle, and I wonder if it's a grandchild for him, if he ever expected it.

An American obesity statistic strides by with her son in tow; he is barefoot and wears a pair of pants that someday he might grow into, but no pants would fit her legs. The fat droops over the inside of her knee joint and finally finishes in a grotesque curve just above her ankle. I wonder if it hurts, for her. If it hurts to get out of bed or if there is a bed.

There is so much at Wal-Mart it came make you stagger to think about these stores. And I do. I know of six in just one town; each with the same mass of stock, and I wonder where all of it comes from. All the frozen TV dinners; all the iron and wood to make the rakes and hoes and shovels. I wonder where all the cotton for the clothes comes from; the plastic for every gawdawful thing in there.

In the Winco, the sickness returns. I look at all the rows and rows of vegetables, the crates of strawberries and the tomatoes and oranges and apples and potatoes stacked high in large bins, and I want to scream. I look at them, and each of them has a face. The seeds of new plants. The sheer amount of vegetables, and only for fifty cents. The meat does not affect me anymore; I can't see the lamb or cow or chicken that died and now laws in various tasty bits in cold freezers. They are humble animals; the only people who protest for them seem to be the ones who have never grown up with them and know what they are and how theirs minds are. But the vegetables are what hurt the most.

It is late, and the rows and shelves are empty and stand in disarray, with people eager to leave and get home in time to watch whatever cable debauchery they will. But these are the weak. The poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free; the Lady Madonna with five children dangling off of her and screaming and demanding toys with only thirty dollars in the bank, 35 dollars in groceries that will only last a few days and a check card only for emergencies.

The videos at the major video are nearly all gone now and rest in piled heaps on a few cheap fold-out tables in the worst corner of the store with no video cameras and no barcode stickers for four and five dollars apiece. "Les Miserables" and "Phantom of the Opera" rest in standardized cases for the videos that don't have their paper covers any more. "Maid in Manhattan" DVDs are the same price. Two young men with lisps and very feminine hand gestures man the counter.

I think for a moment about the woman I work with who was called a homophobe and is outraged that they legalize sodomy; and I smile to myself, and know that they both like the Beach Boys, for the same reason.

In the fifties-styled diner while you wait for burgers and Coca-Cola that's nearly all syrup you can watch the race statistics from the bookies run across one of the numerous big screen TVs; four or five for almost every sport you can bet on run the length of the ceiling, angled downward toward the single chairs along the floor where the same crowd of older men with baseball caps and grim expressions sit, waiting for their team to come out with the right numbers. And they're the smart gamblers.

You can drop a nickel in the miniature jukeboxes and wait for your song to come up; but usually the queue is so long that you'll leave long before yours comes up. But it's still a ritual to drop the nickel into the slot and press those two buttons. The waitress is a pretty young girl with khaki pants, and what looks like natural blonde hair tied in a ponytail. The only thing that throws off her appearance is the belt and wristbands with steel spikes in them, and a few disdainful looks at the more mundane clientele. I sit and wonder if she is a communist at heart.

I only get sick in the cities any more, it seems. The mountains are what loved me and where I raised. These summers where the sun is a benevolent enemy and has given me those blotches of skin cancer upon my back when I forgot to fearfully respect him, and the cold winter bites and kills, her embrace as deadly as the desert yet more deceiving to the unaccustomed traveler. And the trees up here don't scream.