The heat rises and it rises; the soil dries out; leaves wither on the branch. Far into the evening, the ice cream truck jingles out plastic pastel jingles from tiny plastic pastel speakers. The public domain has its uses. Children, not yet encultured, nostalgic for a time a month ago, irretrievable, get to hear various very old oldies, songs from yesterday’s yesterday, all for lack of copyright.
A certain longstanding confection is being discontinued. Adults, those with the power to purchase, some of them with children full grown, voice their nostalgic discontentment. The ice cream man, this man working the minimum federal legal wage, he with children also, registers this discontent, with a perfunctory nod, with a perfunctory word, the relevant complaints forgotten just as soon the transaction ends. We could all learn from such kind attentive ignorance.
Once there were beautiful parking spaces, and other, even more beautiful parking spaces alongside those beautiful parking spaces. They are being torn up; they are being replaced with mixed-use condominium towers, マンション as the Japanese call them, mansions in the brownfields, mansions on the demolished state highway offramp, mansions among those beautiful former parking spaces.
A bill is left on the countertop. Tipping is customary for a limited number of jobs in the food service industry. Those discontented adults, now slightly less discontented, walk away homeward with their purchases, those slightly less nostalgic confections. We can say contented animals move from burrow to treat, from treat to burrow. Treats are the crucial thing, once a living has been won. Burrow or mansion, everything is a mansion once its owned outright.
A coyote trots homeward, off towards current or former state highway offramps, towards more distant districts, all filled with thunder and rain. The children gawk; the adults take their photos. The coyote has a bag of ice cream, plastic, translucent, leaking, in its mouth, a bag secured. Nonetheless, it drips on the pavement. Some loss is inevitable. Abundance here, want there, ownership, rentership, dairy with sugar, rainfall elsewhere, development, nostalgia. That’s just how it goes.
