Signs

Bright, sunny but cold October afternoon. We’re going down 2^nd Avenue North being followed by a woman on a smartphone talking loudly at the top of her lungs. She’s walking fast. We can’t shake her. This isn’t uncommon. I encounter at least one to two people talking loudly on a smartphone, though sometimes in a conversation with a walking partner. The loudness is what gets me. Why so loud? It occurs to me that these people are so terrified of solitude that they feel the need to fill the space around them with the sound of their voice. They’re terrified of what’s inside them. What’s inside them is nothing. They’re hollow. If it weren’t for their remodeling projects and baby carriers and home security systems they’d have nothing whatever to talk about. At least this is my theory, take it or leave it. Down on 9^th Avenue West we spot an orb web with a spider at its center. We’re captivated by it. The web is on a median divider with a stop sign and a few shrubs. The spider has anchored one part of the web to a small flowering plant and the other end to the top of the stop sign. I wonder which end she began first. I would guess the stop sign; she waited for a breeze to blow her to the shrub. Then, when she established her two anchor points, she began her web. I imagine there’s a good amount of thinking involved. Planning, strategizing, scheming. The web is protected from the traffic while at the same time taking advantage of the open space to catch whatever stray bugs come flying through. We come to a section of road where a city crew had done some repair on a sewer or gas line and covered it with cement. There were a set of tracks in it. We looked at the tracks and tried putting together an identity based on the tread and shape and shoe size. The tread was light and tightly patterned. There weren’t running shoes. They were designed for casual walking. They were small, about a size 6. We guessed it must’ve been a teenager. The toes came to a point, so we surmised a feminine identity. A young teenage girl. Did she do it on purpose? Or was she lost in thought, listening to music on a headset, or gazing at a smartphone? Our narrative fell short. We needed a better tracker. We imagined an expert putting an entire identity together based simply on the tread imprinted in this cement. Which is, really when you come down to it, a form of reading. Signs in the dirt. Signs in the sand. Signs in cement. Nearer to home we travel down the little trail through Bhy Kracke park. R’s blue jay puts in an appearance. R tosses her a peanut, which she pounces on immediately and flies off to bury it somewhere. Everything is a sign of something, it seems. Though clouds, I think, are a different story. No intent, nothing deliberate, just the drift of vapor, serendipity of form, illiteracy of air, blowing nowhere in particular.