something to cry about

I just watched Shea Craig's performance tonight and it really stayed with me- more than just the scent of onions that clung to my eyes and clothes. For those of you that missed it, Shea diced onions for one hour in his installation piece this evening. A lot of onions. 10 pounds if I remember correctly, just one of the three bags he brought with him. When I first heard that he would be cutting onions, I was intrigued, but wasn't sure how long I could watch it before losing interest.

Then as soon as he started, I knew I was going to be there until he ended. For a while I didn't even have any idea why, and for the most part, I still don't know why and I'm okay with that. He was on his knees in front of an overturned wooden crate dicing onions meticulously. He would pause as he picked up each new onion and hold it before slicing off the top of the bulb. He looked so meditative and contemplative-purposeful that for a moment, cutting onions was almost a prayer. He set the tops on the side of the board as a record of what he'd accomplished. He diced the onion by cutting it into halves, slicing each half horizontally and then chopping the rest.

I was painful to watch almost, not only because I knew the chemicals he was surrounding himself with were going to cause the liquid on his eyes to convert to sulphuric acid, but because of what the rest of us were doing. Shea was sitting in a shanty- barely a shelter, someplace the homeless would live and he was cutting onions. Everyone else was wandering around, chatting and enjoying free coffee and food.
The act of cutting onions was brought to the center and set against the rest of us in our comforts. I sat there watching and felt horrible eating my free brownie.
After a while, his technique began to give out- there was now no pause, the tops were flung away with the skins, no longer a record and just in the way. the horizontal slice was gone and the end bits weren't chopped but discarded. He began to eat one like an apple, his face red and wet. He cut his hand and ignored it.

For the most part, I stopped trying to analyze just why I was feeling the way I was and just took it as just as valid in not having an answer. Cutting onions could make me feel something and I don't know why or how or really what I even was feeling. the specificity perhaps that Danielewski suggested?