Solstice MMXXII
The seasonal parade has turned the backstreets to a carpark. Drivers crane from half-opened windows. They shake their heads in dismay. The usual yard upon yard of asphalt has given way to actual abodes, given way to genuine habitations, multistory even, with zones of vegetation interposing, not plain grass but shrubbery, arboreal luxuriance, annual and perennial flowers at the peak of flowering season. It seems a dubious thing to simply walk to a place. Elsewhere the ambulatory are subject to a harsher rule. They cross the street crossing themselves, cross with the fear of god or the fear of many gods or the fear of none in particular, whatever their confessional preference, so long as traffic flows unimpeded, lane upon lane flowing unimpeded, the dream of egress perfect and extended indefinitely.
Night falls late, the latest nightfall of the year, or the earliest, hemisphere depending. The bars, even those nondescript locals for locals, are filled with celebrants, naked some, festively adorned with the usual accessories of conventional eccentricity: boas, bodypaint, large colorful hats. A retiree, a local as it happens, genial now from celebration, orders the expensive variant of a cheap domestic lager. On his belly, large but not as large as previously so, an early rendition of the heliocentric cosmos is reproduced. He engages the bartender with banter about his weight loss goals, made the solstice previous. The bartender hands him his lager, in violation, maybe, of state and municipal health codes. But as the lights go up, as the sign is turned, as he trundles home, it seems best, parade or no parade, in whatever state of undress, in no dress at all, to trundle, to be able to trundle home. A drunk ape, a drunk sybaritic ape, harms his dignity whenever he operates a machine. Fobs and buttons, levers and wheels, they all cheapen him, diminish his life, as if done for research of dubious utility. He needs to trundle. He needs to trundle free. Nakedness and drunkenness necessarily attend certain occasions; the drive home, with or without traffic, with or without parking found, is graceless.
