The Urban Soup (Part II)

I love recognizing strangers in the shifting lanscape. It's like finding that pepper corn in boiled cabbage soup. You'll never bite down on it, but it gives focus at least as something to eat around. (If you've never had boiled cabbage soup--I'm talking subsistence-level boiled cabbage soup--don't worry.) There are three such things in my mind now:

The Street Sweeper: This fellow driving his gargantuan machine comes every evening and just washes out all the crap accumulating with the carelessness of passers-by and careless students. The hot jets of water sound like the tsunami has finally penetrated inland and is about to take me for a ride. The lights flash everywhere and I cower here behind my desk. One could orchestrate revolutions with this behemoth. I have visions of driving it right into the legislative chamber of some puppet-parliament while the grateful people cheer. All this is outlined in the red of the setting sun. The flag of this imaginary central Asian republic waves proudly. Our protagonist gets the girl, who is also swept up in the public outpouring of emotions. The credits roll and J-pop begins to play. (Something like "we fighting love"...)

The Buttery Boys: This is in the cafeteria where I eat as I study. There are many groups that gather in here, but the most prominent is the table reserved for the custodial staff. A wonderful multiethinic rainbow family, and the foreman seems to be an educated fellow. Smart: the university probably pays well, and the union is powerful. Thye discuss current events with long digressions into health and politics. Somehow looking at these people makes me not all that afriad if the approaching flu pandemic.

The Tour Bus: What are they sight-seeing on my street? We're not a glamorous street (although we do have what amounts to the white house of the Canadian left just down the block: it is painted green and has a fairly ornate door). They are free to look at the broken gate in the alley, at the blighted square of earth trampled by one too many construction-worker boots, at the bay window with the blinds down and the drunken pumpkin (complete with bottle of tequila) throwing up its own guts. They can gawk and take photos of our scavanged furniture on the porch. They shouldn't forget our garbage pile. That's a big pile. The raccoons get at it: so it goes.

Consider: "This and this."