sketchbook: Monday 17 October 2011
MON 17 OCT 2011 ca. 1:45 pm SAFEWAY PARKING LOT
The sun is hot and bright, but the air streaming by is cool, scented faintly with sweet baked goods or rubber. The lot is nearly full; cars prowl like great insects looking for their resting places.
"It shocks me when people do that."
Scruffy man talking to a woman he has approached here in the parking lot. He wears old black sweatpants, a baggy olive-silt sweatshirt, and a red ball cap. He is unshaven. And now:
"I got her licence plate and the mark matches up," says the metallic-red-haired woman, returning to the man. Apparently he witnessed a parking-lot collision.
A kind of desert: paved ground, blue expanse of sky, sun nude of any cloud, blank cinderblock walls. People backing cautiously, turning, new takers pulling in to stalls still warm from the previous car.
"How do you spell licence?" says the woman behind me, presumably asking the scruffy-looking man.
A pair of women walk by, one elderly, one middle-aged. Young couple arrive at the jeep parked next to my car—girl in a salmon-colored shirt, and a small wiry young guy in an apple-green shirt and ball cap.
"OK we'll be back," says the girl to the occupant of the jeep, slamming the door.
A plaintive canine whining begins from within.
The rattling trundle of the old shopping carts, rusting and misaligned.
Brambles are massed at the wall of the deserted white-brick building just beyond my car. A separate paved lot next to it is cracked, disintegrating. A little girl with a springy mop of blonde curls runs across it, her black leotards scissoring as she gambols along.
An old man pushes his wheeled walker, holding one bag of groceries. A young bearded man belches loudly as he passes the old man, his leather boots scuffing the pavement confidently.
And I'm in jeans and jean jacket, standing at the right-rear quarter-panel of my car, leaning over the trunk lid, Staedtler ballpoint wriggling over the page. The cool breeze puffs erratically by: air that has come from somewhere cold.
