sketchbook: Saturday 13 August 2011

SAT. 13 AUG 2011 ca. 2:00 pm THRIFTY FOODS

On a bench of black steel outside the new supermarket. All is new: new buildings made up of cubes, new wide concrete sidewalks, new gray shopping-carts. Only the asphalt of the parking-lot looks less new: it has faded to a medium gray, chalkstriped with fading white lines, blotched with motor oil.

The day is warm but not hot; a breeze gusts through the parking-lot, shivering the baby trees planted at intervals. Beyond the stores stand the green mountains, as though this were a shopping center in some remote community.

Senior citizens stalk carefully from the quiet sliding doors by me, toting bags. Younger couples walk faster, always hurrying a bit. An old black Chevy Blazer growls to life next to me, unburned gasoline wafting warmly in the moving air.

But now Kimmie has emerged from Bed Bath & Beyond, with a big box of 50 coathangers. We'll have to lug those home on foot—and I'm not even clear on why someone would want to pay money for them.