We stood in Wallace’s supermarket once before and spent the whole time on the queue. There is a clause in his first sentence that we walked straight past. It explains why the shop is full.
“The supermarket is very crowded, because of course it’s the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop…”
Wallace gives the reason the shop is crowded and the reason is the hour. It is the time of day when people who have jobs do their shopping, which is the reason you are there as well. Everyone in that aisle came for the same reason, at the same time, under the same constraint. The crowd is the shape of that hour, and you are one of the people making the shape.
Look at how he puts the reason in. Because of course it’s the time of day. Of course — meaning this needs no argument, everybody knows it. That is what keeps it out of sight. A fact that plain never gets consulted, because consulting it would mean somebody had doubted it, and nobody has.
Stand outside the crowd and the shop is full of people who are in the way. That reading arrives instantly and it never mentions you. It cannot. The view you are working from has you behind the eyes and everybody else out in front, so the one fact that would explain the whole scene — that every person here has your reason — is the fact the view is unable to show you.
Correct for it by making yourself small and nothing moves. Someone apologising for taking up room in the aisle is still the figure the aisle is arranged around, with a lower rank written in. He has given himself a part to play in the scene rather than seen it.
Decide instead to be patient about the crowd and you keep the position and add a virtue on top. Patience is a verdict passed on the crowd by somebody standing apart from it. It is pleasanter for everyone and it leaves the count where it was: them, and you.
So what are we aiming at. We want the picture of the shop to have the person holding the basket in it.
Let us see where this shows up in an ordinary day. Three places.
- The shop is full when you get there after work, and you notice how full it is.
- The road is slow at the hour you set out, and you notice the traffic.
- Everyone at home needs the kitchen inside the same twenty minutes, and you notice how much is going on.
One thing to watch in all three. The account arrives with a crowd in it and a person it is happening to. Look at whether that person also got counted in the crowd.
You are not deciding anything in that second, and you are not trying to feel differently about the crowd. Watch whether you were in the picture, and leave it as it is.