writing – Page 76 – Michael Seidel, writer

It’s a recurring theme for me. I see old people and wonder what they were like when they were young, and I look at young people and wonder, what will they be like when they’re old.

Like her, in the floppy sun hat, green pants, and multiple pastels scarves, short grey blonde hair and wire-rimmed round gold glasses. When did she become that person?

Or take her for example, the blonde early tweener with blue hair and fringe bangs, dressed all in black, with a long-sleeved shirt and tight shorts, white crew socks, and white canvas shoes. She’s a gregarious presence in her small knot of companions. What will she be like in the future?

Weird thing: thirty-five customers by my count in the coffee shop. Four of us are male. Two of the men are working on computers. It looks like the women are all socializing.

Contemplating the dynamics and speculating about people is an attractive way of engaging my mind as I sip coffee and the muse comes to write.

Another grand opening has commenced in Ashlandia. A food truck and picnic table are in the parking lot. Couple chairs. Band is setting up under a white canopy on one side of the small lot. Merchandise has been pulled from the store and is displayed on racks and tables. Vintage clothing. Looks like a good turnout.

Third business in that location since I lived here, which is nineteen years. Once upon a time, that place was a bakery called Four and Twenty Blackbirds. Place to go for pies, cookies, breads, turnovers…well, bakery stuff.

Beside it was a small Italian restaurant. Wiley’s World. Excellent food. It’s now a plant store. Across the street used to be a bank but is now a Starbucks. A coffee shop, updated and modern, replaced the old, beloved coffee shop on the corner that went out of business almost ten years ago when the building’s owners upped the rent. And on the other corner was a bowling alley that is now a small strip shopping center that seems to stay half empty.

Then again, I used to walk to this corner to the coffee shop. Just about a mile, every day. When the coffee shop went away, I had to walk further and further till it reached the point that I was consuming too much of my writing day to reach my writing destination and go back home. Then COVID hit and everything shuttered and there was little walking to anywhere.

“The more things change, the more they stay the same” is the expression. The flux of business and life, revealed in the shifting landscape.