Sitting Outside on Different Bricks, Part Now

A couple, possibly father and daughter, begin their meals which have just been delivered to them by Felicia. The couple is talking about logistics related to a procedure the man is having in the morning. The work will be done by 9:30 tomorrow morning, he says, and I'll have forgotten about it by then.  

The man won't, though. I've just heard this is his last solid meal for a while. I hope that he will be okay, in that vague way I want everyone to be okay. Inside of me is a desire that our civilization finds a way to last. I am hoping that the rest of my life will be spent on brushstrokes to try to bring that canvas to life. 

There are a lot of people in front of me as I type these words upon a metal round table, halfway up Charlottesville's Downtown Mall. I came here because it's possibly one of the last times in a while I can have my Sunday brunch here outside, sitting outside watching strangers walk up and down. Many of the passerby are tourists clad in nice clothing, and I'm glad they are here spending money. 

The older I get, the more removed I am from any of their lives. I fade into the background, despite wearing terribly mismatched clothes. I look up every now and then to see if there's anyone I know, and if I need to keep my head down to avoid someone who might know me. I'm hopeful this won't be the case.

Then I see someone coming up the mall in clothes that are more garish than mine, and I put my head down hoping he'll just pass on by. He does. The person who walked by owns a lot of property around here, and sees the world from his perspective. When I speak to him, he's always complaining about how the local government has messed him over this time. I've written stories about some of these incidents. 

Now I don't write as many stories. I'm in a different role than I was in two years ago, or whenever it was I last wrote a public journal with my feet on the bricks of the downtown Mall. The last time I wrote a public journal, my feet were on bricks on a different shore.  A lot happened on that trip, but I lost the notebook in which I wrote it all down, just a few days after arriving back home. I'm not as upset about that as I should be, but I'm learning to let things go.

Before I got here, I was at the book sale for the Friends of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library at the Gordon Avenue Branch. In years past, I would have gone there excited to get a lot of books for my children and family. I missed the one this spring because of the adjustment in my life, and I definitely got more things because the adjustment has already happened. 

Today, though, my spirits blossomed seeing all those strangers looking for bargains, looking for deals. I wanted to interview all of them, find out their stories.  I wanted to understand who they all are and how we all fit together in this fragile world. I spoke to the guy who runs the book sale, Pete, and he seemed in his element. He's had the position now for a few years, corralling the thousands and thousands of donations into a steady stream of people and donations. 

The couple have now left, and I'm not still sure if they were a father and daughter, or a husband and wife. I didn't have the courage to ask them, and it doesn't really matter. She had a dog, a small poodle, who looked like my last dog, the long lost Billy. Billy was in my dreams again last night, as he so often is. I'm beginning to think I'll never have another dog again, and that he'll be waiting for me when I die on whatever happens when we stop. I don't know what will happen when we stop, but I won't give in to this notion that we're nothing more than temporarily animated meat. There's something else going on.

Or there isn't. I don't know. I feel compelled to write down the mundane and trivial, throwing word after word in the pursuit of sentences that may lay down foundations through which something might grow. 

I watch Frank walk up the mall, carrying his stick. He stops and talks to the man outside who is selling some sort of pictures. Frank doesn't see me and keeps on moving. The selling man talks to him. 

Another man spots me, sees my computer, and spends several minutes telling me about the illicit activities that used to take place 50 years ago in a neighborhood in my city. I want to write it all down to document it, but I'm not sure I have the energy to get all of those pieces in place at this time.

As I type this, I'm about 60 feet away from planters that were illegally installed on steps outside a fancy steak place. Someone asked me about if they were allowed, and I referred them to someone else, and that person is doing something about it, maybe. No one will get murdered, unlike in the illegal activity that Hawk told me about in the past.

Hawk is now drinking a beer by himself in the island. I would go over and talk to him some more, but this is a day I need to get my own foundation secured. I'm not really doing that as I sit here. The energy that existed at the beginning of this entry not fades and I find myself thinking these words are just the ones they were when I wrote them. There's nothing special about them, but they are who I am and who I was.