I like the sound of rain hitting the roof of a vehicle. I like to drive to the parking lot of a recently closed department store and sit. When the store was open, the lot was busy with its customers vehicles, coming and going, buying their trinkets and blinkets and nice fluffy winkets. The doors are now shut, the buildings for lease. Somewhere is a youngster that owns a winket, blinket or sninket bought here, and she’s saddened to see its closed doors, because when she feels alone and there’s noone around, she sits with her moonky and snunket and also the nice soft warm winket, and she feels peacefully calm.
The rain on the roof of my truck calms. Watching the streams of water as they merge on the windshield to form a liquid sheet of distorting wetness complements the effect.
There’s another store here, next to the silenced hulk of retail greatness, a small thrift shop. Value Village. No tribal warriors in this village, no grass skirts and nasal bones, no spears or grass huts in the village, but if you need a “slightly worn” shirt or pants, if you need a tire iron or weight bench, if you need pots and pans or a set of encyclopedias that’s missing the “G” volume (Gaa-Gym), and you find them on a day when the secret discount color matches the color on the objects price tag, you’ve won! You have won! You are a winner! Now you have a story, “. . . it is cool, huh? I found it at the Value Village, and it was 50% off!”
The rain coats the otherwise dull unattractive asphalt of the parking lot that wonders what it’s done wrong. . . “Once there was so much traffic here, but now. . . I don’t know. . . people come, they shop at the Village, semi’s park overnight then leave, it’s all just so. . . different.” Yeah, I know, parking lots rarely ponder. But the rain. . . it has a way of making the asphalt look like my soul – sometimes shiny and alive, when the drops cause a shimmer of motion in the many small puddles, sometimes vibrant and clean and hopeful. The rain masks the true nature of soul and asphalt – dry, dark, weathered. The pattern of drops on the roof of my truck decreases momentarily, the asphalt breathes, and now the rain picks up again, and calmness returns.
“For Lease, 1-800- XXX-XXXX. Space and Pad Site.” The retail site awaits it’s re-awakening. Call. Call soon.
The rain soothes a soul, but only until it’s cloud says “I’m empty.” Then dryness returns, and store and soul wait, wondering.
5 comments
On this glorious day after Christmas, when I come to grips with the fact that stupid ass Santa brought me a winket instead of the quonket I had clearly requested, I totally get this.
The end of an institution. The death of a dream. The forwardig of the URL to Amazon for all blinket requests, to be paid by electronic dinkets and delivered by carrier pinket.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m in favor of progress and efficiency. But yeah sometimes it’s a funny reminder of our own obsolescenece when we see the end of an icon.
Irrelevant: up in Quebec, “Value Village” was called “Village de Valeurs”. I always felt classy walking in and grabbing that mustard-crusted blazer off the rack and saying, in my worst French, “BONJOUR! LA PLUME DE MA TANTE EST SUR LE BUREAU!”
I guess having experienced the ease of cyber shopping, I’m not too saddened by the brick and mortar departures. It sucks that humans lost their jobs, and browsing aisles is always fun, but I heard a comedian (forgot who) once joke ” If you haven’t been to K-Mart in a while, hurry up!” referring to their slow demise. Yup. This was a K-Mart.
Wasn’t that line in the Exorcist?
Holy frick you’re right, that was in the Exorcist! I got it from an episode of the Love Boat where Gopher is trying to learn French. But I think the Exorcist came first.
And yea that’s the sad truth of “progress”. Those who aren’t ready for it get left behind. Some kid designs a website, good for the kid, but thousands of employees find their lives uprooted as a result. There’s no easy solution because you want society to move forward, but at what cost?
The workforce isn’t the only group that suffers. The other day I needed a stupid plonket for my computer and drove to 4 different places, each place telling me I’d have to order it online. A stupid plonket that costs $2. I ended up ordering it on eBay from China.
Building for lease:
Nature: Blighting my land with that building? That doesn’t belong here!
Building: What??
*nature takes over the building, ever so slowly, reclaiming what’s rightfully hers.
How can physical stores even compete with the gigantic amount of stuff online these days? It makes me wonder how some of these shops still survive, I mean their owners are rich but it can’t really be profitable to have a store selling overpriced stuff when you can get same items online for alot cheaper. And the range, don’t get me started or I shall be off to another online shopping spree (kidding…)
I walked through the rain yesterday. Since its been raining alot a common occurrence is for me to walk through the rain. I need to use my umbrella more often.
More people are certainly gonna lose their jobs as AI takes over. its a frightening prospect.
Yes, it is, but as Salt points out, it’s progress, and it’s our own undoing, and isn’t it just going to be an interesting century as populations increase and jobs shrink? I don’t know how it’s going to play out for future generations.
There’s that tv show, “Life after Humans” that describes nature reclaiming it’s planet – the show is formatted to frighten us. From the musical selections to the narrators tone of voice, it’s intended to make us fear our own absence while vines grow up the sides of our buildings and grass slowly buries our asphalt. I say bring it on, round us up and move us out, and I quote the late great genius George Carlin who said “We think we can save the planet? One of these days, the planets gonna shake us off like a bad case of fleas.” Yeah. Yeah. The planet will be better off when we’re gone. I mean, we’re ok, but I prefer the ocean, and cats.