A very old man who’s body was permanently bent into the shape of a seven, so that he always stared straight down onto his own shabby shoes, used to appear with his mower and cut the grass below. I have no idea what his face looked like. I knew that he lived down the way in a tiny decrepit house in the middle of industrial buildings and across from the Soup Shop that James once had a tiny 2 person cafe in. At the time the population of Georgetown was 2,000 and many of the houses were falling apart.
My apartment had one huge window facing East. It felt like a birds nest and looked out into the abandoned yard of the large old house two doors down . The yard seemed frozen in time; It was full of empty bird houses and an empty birdbath stood in the middle. The grass was always cut, but nobody was there to ensure the house didn’t rot from the inside out. I think now 6 years later it might still be empty.
Last week our buddy Kimbro announced that he’d gotten tiny Denver! Tiny Denver was flipped several years ago. Previously, the packed in hovel hadn’t been touched by outsiders for decades. This is where the lawnmower and his operator lived and you could tell from the outside that there was nothing new beyond the front door. At the time, I fantasized about what it was like inside. Sometime after Margaux was born the tiny house was sold and refreshed. The tiny yard was fenced and the soup shop had more customers with the growth of our neighborhood. Margaux and I had already moved to Willow Street.
And i’m just tripping out because the tiny shack that housed this isolated man for decades is now going to be the home of a tiny new family expecting a baby and really it’s somehow not the same house. Fucking weird how a life is lived and things change ~ a lonely shack is given a name and becomes a first home and the grass gets cut and the tiny old man is just someone we remember and regret not knowing.
Here we are looking out the birds nest.
