That
is not a long stretch of way. Yet, it’s interesting. The new world tries to
make everything uniform, safe, practical, and loses the poetry and whimsy, the
character of the old. But there, for some reason, in that small town north of
other small towns, something remains. People were walking around, some with
umbrellas in the sun. Others were fast at work under cars on lifts, the opening
bay doors letting in the bright light of the afternoon. I remember Dade County
on a day like that in the middle nineteen eighties when one of those repair
shops had a man out front adorned in blue coveralls and he was singing along with
h the loud radio the song Hey Jude. The tall wildflowers and bushes grow uncut
and unnoticed in vacant lots. It seems every other property is a vacant lot. A
racoon goes past on a metal roof, just there in the shadows, not for too long,
towards some place he knows. The temperature rises. There is a Laundromat with
friendly folks, a dog outside, a little parking lot. A hardware store, a
veterinary clinic and an animal hospital. Some bus stops, and then goes. Yes,
there is something here, - some hum of life, and some stretch where there are
chairs and bikes and an old couple. The big box stores, vacuity, bric-a brac,
have not taken hold. There is just enough. A rocky way. Pebbles around. Stones.
A lake somewhere hidden behind it all. A bird on a fence. Telephone wires but
not too many. I think of canes and candy, of skies blue but almost completely saturated
with interesting clouds…motes, dragons, fairies, strange elves, messages,
other. The night would be even better. A wind, the temperature dropping, the thought
of keeping a hand written journal chronicling real travel,- to see the sea, to
walk by other parapets and to join the paramour which is the coastline. In the
night I feel the ocean wind and still myself to smell the salt air, to notice
the stone walls, to imagine something or other, to remember a dream, to observe
a nuance, rub the palm of my hand on the cement and feel the fine grains of sand that hide there in the sun, to know the environs in body and mind and spirit.
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Brian, I enjoyed listening to my computer read this piece over and over. Your writing is like a painting in which the artist has taken sentences and presented details from a landscape with the clarity of a good quality camera. Memories are also depicted and moods of a subtle and sensitive nature. By reading your prose other but comparable memories are triggered in the reader.
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