You see, I told her, ‘There are small sand paths framed by green grasses, thick and beautiful in themselves…resilient grasses, and the ways lead to the places by the sea.’

‘Oh it does.’

‘Oh it does. Or, they do,’ I said, ‘and all the cliche things are there, the tropes as it were, but such things though the literati speak against them, are wonderful. Who will need anyone really? The warm breeze. The sun kisses the coastline and all around.’ 

‘Nice.’

‘It’s better than nice. There is a pier. Two actually. One to the north and one to the south.  There are loquacious birds, and they are against reason and logic, wise. They know things. We can be mystics also, like the birds are. Scry the sky. Watch the water. Intuit the wind. Make poems and pictures…’

I looked outside. The cold wind threw some garbage around and nothing even got anywhere. A stand of boulevard trees were the wrong colour on trunks and old leaves for traffic pollution. Not even a painter with several choices of grey could find a more rueful and uninspiring hue to declare the firmament with. And this grey was everywhere, for it must have melted into the earth and saturated it when a heartless joker was making the too long season. Loud modified cars, read noise pollution, yelled their egos, their small-mindedness and gauche vulgarity to anyone that could hear. And miles of uniform urban sprawl. No bird in sight. 

‘Hey,’ I asked her, ‘what was that term you used to use to denote people whose personalities became otherwise awkward, strange, cold, odd, for their value system and circumstance? Ungrounded people. Did you say “stunted”?’ 

‘Affected.’

‘Affected. That’s it.’

‘Ya. Affected.’

‘Let the affected have the affected. That’s great. They love one another. Let the affected live happily ever after. I wish them the best, that all their status quo dreams of shining mediocrity come true, and a thousandfold a that. But far away from me. I will be, beside the sea. See, that rhymes.’

‘Very funny.’

I glanced out and some poor soul, an elderly lady in a big coat, almost got hit by a car that rolled through a light turning. She stopped just in time. Then, what could she really do? The wind soon practically threw her over also. Many forces she had to battle, I thought. 

‘Anyways,’ I continued, trying to draw my conclusion, ‘I know a place. There is all that, and inland just a bit, is a marketplace with friendly souls, to get things. There used to be a small bookstore there also. Come to think of it, imagine if it is still there. I wonder. Probably not. But you know…it could be. It just might be there still.’ 

‘Are we gonna tend to the rabbits, George? Tell me about the rabbits George.’

‘Funny. I don’t mean it like that. Well maybe a bit. But you aren’t Lennie, and this is no book. There is nothing here, or not much…’

‘It’s a tale as old as the coast you describe.’

‘So what? Ya so what if it is? It’s new for every person journeying it in reality or imagination or both.’

And I could hear the sound of southern water somehow, for a second, like a sanguine auditory vision, a psychic impression. I realized it was a fountain and it took a minute to think away from it and go back, but I realized it was because there was a fountain right outside that market I had spoken of, had lauded. All this was then interrupted by the cacophony of a groups’ haughty course laughter under the blinking lights, lights intent on causing a headache where possible. Lights not like the light of the moon or the sun, lights not like the pink blue purple green, even orange electric and eclectic lights of those southern grounds, poetically and somehow musically accenting the earth (lights dreamt of and wished for). No, the current lights were too strong. They were blinding fluorescent lights. 

And they had no soul.