We were out at the market in the old town and it was busy and the day was steel grey, clouds, but warm, too warm for the month, but the first strawberries were in from the south of the state where it’s never winter. Ethan sells me some new carrots and a bunch of mizuma for lunch and we talk about seeds for a minute while the dog searches the ground for crumbs from the baker next door where they have the most tempting croissants, but the price always makes me flinch so I leave them there and prefer to get mine from the angry french man who has a shop near the fish store towards home. Always amazed at the amount of spandex that people are happy to wear, and I ask myself, do people not like real pants any more? I show up in jeans, seems appropriate. Something about form hugging feels weird to me. The dog doesn’t mind what people wear. Later, we walk to the cafe for coffee but the line is long, formed with said spandex-wearing persons so we go next door for some juice and the dog waits outside the door, the sign says no pets, he is a pet, and people look at him with his eyes that are pleading for a snack a bite of anything. We take out juice and sit under the ficus tree in the yard of the coffee shop and overhear a conversation about pizza dough and the problems of a restaurant that sound too prosaic for me to really care much about it but then I notice that one of them has a birthmark on their leg next to a tattoo so it all seems fine.
Driving home, it feels flat. The day I mean, the day feels flat, like a performance that was practised but when performed was too routined and perfect to feel like it had any meaning to it. On the radio, the classical station asks for money for support, the dog is sleeping in the back seat, he’s tired, and my mind is tired, and the day doesn’t give me what it should. I can’t figure out why.
