avenue reality

in a drowsy hamlet where watery eyes and bony substructures of facial hair serve to coax the crumbling granola from the earth, wealth a mere background static concession, it is difficult to find someone that you can grasp in greater detail than a passing. you may see, or even meet, strange people, characteristic people, distinctive people; individuals that are always loitering in motion, conducting a private conversation and exclusively whispering or shouting to do it. you may sniff the faint throes of money laundering. you may find yourself annexed in a false ubiquity alongside a castle with a blue roof.

but all of these will be very slow, useless impressions, not brilliant enough even to be painted. all of these will merely bemuse you as you make for the brick-mounted lockbox to secure your paper rent. it's not taylor swift's vague, pretentious cosplay of a provincial unreality. there are foxholes in the frozen field, yes, and fairy lights beneath the eaves, but nothing twinkles. there have been tales of a fire-escape set, smoking slava and her little dog too, but i confess that i've never seen her. sleek, fast luxury vehicles introduce yuppies to hibachi, and then with white-blue headlights searching three parking lots over swiftly take them away again. it's little more than a strip mall put on reverse steroid ice. this lumpy façade could never dream of being gentrified.

so it's quite unexpected, to find among this blithe lack of peanut gallery for a silent-streeted snow-world scraping of your windshield, someone so oddly quick-faced and real. maybe a manic pixie dream girl is supposed to feed the birds and have warrior cats and buy a new car in the spur of the moment. or maybe she's just a matter-of-fact lesbian from the alternate universe who knows these things. just knows them. her house is neither a caricature of age nor a crinoline of the lack. the moby dick bathroom is, of course, a happy marriage of the literary and the nautical. the prose-aic novelty clock contextualizes the stickers on the violin case in equal parity with ishmael's insoliloquoy on the shower curtain. there are guitars on the credenza and violas on the wall. the front door is mysteriously absent, so the treeline opens to the side. and the cat, who is indeed a bitch, likes to step out to loaf and loiter. these things are far too effortless ever to be contrived - but i'd be lying if i said she's not trying.

my neighbor's crying because her father's cancer dying. her husband's thirteen years older and her mother already passed. her neighbor in the butcher's attic is contemplating suicide. the shut-in up the way sits on his balcony and enjoys classic rock. but it's not summer, in the village. it's not pretty walking time. it's cold and everything's rotting, from the car batteries to the turtle buried deep and shallow. there aren't enough bow ties to buoy this bastion. there are no more bright mornings at the middle elementary school. the jeeps and the fords aren't bucking a protest. the quiet house is open, and the main street has no pride.