• The apartment building with an adorable little walkway straight through the brick.
  • Going to an estate sale on a purchase mission from Mom.
    • The cool-looking, middle-aged woman leaning against a tree, wearing aviator sunglasses, friendlily telling me I looked “too young to be into vintage.” Me, explaining my purchase mission from Mom, but also that I do like old stuff, mostly music instruments. Her, saying, “They don’t make ‘em the way they used to.” Me, saying, “Except microwaves.” (They’re made better now.) Her, agreeing. Admiring the house’s architecture together.
    • The white-haired guy who arrived on a bike, talking to himself about the house’s nice tuck-pointing. Structurally sound, great brick work…
    • The mom calling after her son, Orion.
    • The most Chicago-looking dad of all time, with a gray mustache, and his happy, shy, schlubby son, dollying away a piece of furniture they bought.
    • The house, frozen in 1900-1950.
      • So much wood, so much wicker.
    • The sadness of dismantling someone’s home, piece by piece.
    • The happiness of giving each little thing a new life, like scattering a bunch of seeds to maximize the chances of survival.
    • The racist “mammy” statues.
    • The model trains.
    • How, on the one hand, people buy junk that will get sold in their estate sales, later.
    • How, on the other hand, that doesn’t make the time they spend with the stuff they buy any less valuable.
    • The employees of the sale with stupid, toylike walkie-talkies.
    • The excited crowd of buyers in line CHEERING ME ON when I got out of the house with the stuff I bought. (The purchase mission: failed. Mom’s targets already sold.)
  • On the highway, the boxy, green Volvo station wagon with a massive dog in it.
  • The extra toll machine crossbars stacked in the tollbooth, like reinforcements in waiting.
  • The poor lighting in a video of Trump from the White House. How just about every creative asset his admin, campaign, or the RNC produce is tasteless or nonfunctioning (e.g. the Obama-joke 404 page). How it seems to show, in a trivial way, that creative, curious people don’t want to work for them. How, also in a trivial way, it’s a breakdown in the Trump-Fascist parallel, since Fascist iconography was disappointingly great.
  • The dozens of sunburned, white families tolerating a two-hour wait at the vacation food hotspot.
  • Falling asleep and stretching my skin on a blowup vinyl raft.
  • The possibly Mennonite women on the beach. The bearded man reading the Bible behind them.
  • The group of twenty-year-olds smoking cigars and drinking Fanta (glass bottles).