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| Elara Posts: 5333/9736 |
An interesting ramble... kinda depressing in some ways, but interesting. |
| Stitch Posts: 2505/2785 |
Our once quiet street had slowly mutated itself into a bustling sea of intermittent lights and doppler-effect roars of engines and wheels. What had been plenty of parking was now riddled with ill-parked cars of different sizes and conditions. Add up the spaces between them, and you could fit yet another car into the already crowded asphalt. The guest parking spots remained occupied all day. It was a travesty. And the other side of the street remained empty, guarded only by a sign threatening a towing. It never happened, but why tempt fate, right?
The lawns had been transformed into paltry landscapes memories of what had been; the occasional squirrel scampered across and often met its fate one night when the bored teenagers of the well-to-do upper middle class sped haphazardly through our slowly curving street in their Mercedes and Acuras and lowered whatevers. It was sad to see the pancake of fur some mornings, but it had also become a way of life. You'd figure one generation would pass onto the next generation the truths behind the myths of the giant blurs that rolled past. In an attempt to show the appreciation of the new management, flags had been erected for about one month. I don't really remember when they came down, or even if they're still up. It all just blended together after a while. The windows and doors were replaced, the kitchens and bathrooms redone. The rent increased for some, decreased for others. Some were forced into new leases, others allowed to continue on a month-to-month basis. Neighbors came and went. For a few weeks, the parking areas were occupied by U-hauls and large capacity vans; people parading boxes and furniture in and out of their interiors; large quantities of trash and broken furniture piled up in the Dumpster. The recycle bins overflowed, and the management responded in kind by adding more. It seemed appropriate for a while. There was a crinkly plastic bag filled with memories of old that I had scavenged hastily on my last trip to my mother's home in Southern California. It rested under a pile of clothing that had regurgitated itself from my suitcase and spread throughout my room. In it there was a shoulder rest and violin bow rosin. I had ridden all the way to the music store last Sunday and just watched it from the parking lot, sweat beading on my forehead and running down my cheek. I could hear them in my mind, the sweet vibration of the strings, but something kept me pinned to my bike. I convinced myself they were closed. They weren't, but I rode away anyway. The KFC/A&W restaurant down the street has a vacant store next to it. Pristine and punctuated by a single blue sign on a restroom door. It's a sad sight. I've never set foot inside the new establishment, only glided over the drive-thru asphalt. It was black as night away from the city lights, but had slowly faded into the grays that matched the street just beyond. Those pulled cheddar cheese curds were heaven, if not horribly overpriced and filled with tasty cholesterol, but I couldn't bring myself to order them. I perused the menu, quickly and silently, eyes falling on anything reasonably under $5. "Snack pack and two crispy snackers, please." She read back my order and supplied my total. $4.98. There were still $3 in my possession, resting in a folded condition behind a zippered pocket just above my head. There was a Taco Bell across from the four lanes of traffic. I knew it was bad for me, too, but there was already $5 worth of bad in my passenger seat. "Do you want something to drink with that?" No doubt they knew about me by now. Twice they had forgotten to ask, and twice I had gotten a free drink. I was a reader. I read things repeatedly out of sheer boredom. I had read that offer for a free drink several times while waiting in line at the drive through one day. They thought they hid it. No one ever strays to the middle of the menu, let alone into a small bubble of white and blue. "No, thanks." There's a clunking in the trunk area. It's that 1.5 liter plastic bottle I keep back there to refill the windshield washer fluid reservoir. It's greatly annoying that the US refuses to adopt metric. It would make shopping so much easier. Knowing if I'm being gypped would help more than just the mere comparison shopping. Standing in the aisle, eyes darting from $1.00 and $0.99, and then to the sizes. One is 2 quarts. The other 1.5 liters. I grab the 2 liter pink lemonade and walk out to the registers. It occurs to me that I drove two miles for a 2-liter bottle of pink lemonade. One mile per liter. I should have just biked it. But, the FoodMaxx complex sucks at providing areas to chain up a bike. The piles are segregated into clean and dirty, and the dirty further segregated into colors and then layered inside the hamper in order by which they'll be separated to their spinning and drowning hell at the laundromat. I think nothing of it, but after watching Poke spin in the dryer only to come out poofy, it makes you think. Poke loved the ride, and he loved being fluffy, but he's not riding in the dryer anymore. It equated to the same effect as him chasing his tail. The dryer is now a portal to 2290. It's odd to lose socks to the future. Poke's too cute to blame, but he and Peeve are working at closing the portal. They don't know how to do that, though. It's cold in my room. Perhaps I should close the window, crawl into bed and go to sleep. |
