Vanilla Smoke and Longing

The children had wet, dirty hair. They had been playing in a dirty and particularly unattractive fountain. The fountain has statues of dirty children that are depicted playing in its dirty water. In some respects, I prefer the statues to the human children--they are much less annoying. The children only served to prove once again to me that I am not nearly ready for children. Those children--with their wet, scraggly hair--made me almost loose my appetite.


An old woman sat at the edge of the fountain drinking her smoothie like it was actually a healthy choice. Little did she know, it was full of sugar and sorbet. She watched the children tenderly although they were obviously not her own. Despite her age, she sat swinging her nylon-clothed legs off the edge of that ugly fountain.


There was a middle-aged man further away from the fountain and for some reason he was shading himself under an umbrella while already in the shade. He clearly belonged to a large group of the children; they kept running up to him--wet and loud--and bothering him. If he was left to babysit, he was not doing a very thorough job at it. I watched as the children ran further and further away as he turned his back and entered the chinese restaurant nearby. He was inside as two of the dirty little boys jumped atop a ledge and were running across it in their wet shoes. As the older boy jumped off, the younger one followed. He walked back out and sat down with again with that pointless umbrella.


A couple walked by: a man with tattoos and a woman with piercings in all the wrong places. They both looked foolish in their "rebel-garb."


I was neither interested nor moved by anything I saw. The buildings were contrived--the shopping center common. I did not find the children cute and I did not find the old woman endearing. I definitely formulated that the man was a horrible babysitter and the couple looked ridiculous.


However, nothing moved me. The one thing that moved me this afternoon was the smell of smoke wafting off a woman's cigarette as she walked by--not because I wanted one--but because the smell of a vanilla cigarette made me think of where I wanted to be: New York.