Society Wag Wandering - Sunday strollabout

Along the river we encounter couples and a few I-pod snoozers on park benches. It is the first day of daylight savings time, a day to celebrate around here. It is a veritable parade of couples along the promenade. We ascend up some stairs to get up and over the fancy shopping drag. Caution, around here it is treacherous with slow and witless tourists. We get across safely only to catch a pale man with a facial rash we used to have. We want to tell him about Elidel, worked great for us, but somehow these things are difficult to bring up, so we keep moving.

A woman wearing a dress that accentuates her ass so awestrikingly is encountered by a storefront bistro. It is funny because we are usually demure in such circumstances, give wide berth but this family got in between us and we had to pass directly behind her. As we glance down we recall the words of William Shakespeare:

"The sun has no luster whence I frolic in the abundance of your twin lit moons."

Or maybe that was Chester the Molester. We here at Society Wag have a crippling aversion to remembering who wrote what.

As we walk west we hit an industrial patch over a bend in the river. This stretch has no promenade, just efficient steel bridges and brown ripples in the water. Oh we forgot to mention, the first stretch of river we walked past, near the lake, reminds us: Beauty is never more generous then when water, sun and wind glitter most ostentatiously.

But back to the grittier part of town. Here we pass the Salvation Army hostel. A couple guys hanging out, smoking, a little agitated. Up at the six-way intersection we bear soft right. We must pass a flock of foreigners expunged from a tour bus. The men smoke these brown cheroots; the women wear stylish sunglasses and talk. We skirt past them, then under a train overhead. Then along a row of older storefronts, some rehabbed, some in 'original' condition. This produces in us that most complicated emotion, nostalgia.

The decorative tops of building facades angle against a blue sky. Offices unchanged for fifty years display sun blanched piles of fat folders. A blue balloon lurches into the street. Attached to a sign, it announces an open house. We remember other places like this. The cognitive dissonance of melancholy. Time lost on top of time now. Time now empty and imperturbable. We stagger alone and palely loitering over the interstate. 8 lanes of weekend traffic. It breaks the nostalgia spell with thoughts of the upcoming week.

We want to sneak into the tiny bar on the corner and talk with long lost friends about the upcoming baseball season, but we have found pit stops do not do justice to the Sunday walkabout. We must keep going, we cannot stop until we get a good lather. It was Nietzsche who said, the only thoughts worth keeping are those that come during a brisk trot.

We think it was him anyway. We are not thinking so much, but trying to soak it all in on a delicious sunny Sunday. Twice, actually, cars at intersections do not try and run us over, let us walk past. We pass an open green storefront church that has blessed a bunch of kids who tackle each other on the shady side of the street. We walk past young girls talking about 'this new girl at work' without much enthusiasm. We walk past a father and son, mother and daughter and mother and son. Never forget that most poignant, father and daughter.

Near home there seems to be a profusion of dogs. Couples with babies compete with couples with dogs for dominance. When we get to our house we notice the people across the street are trying to scale their stone house like Spiderman. We believe we have witnessed the first confirmed case of spring fever. An outbreak is sure to follow.