Off-Season

 

Nothing happens here. Men no longer gather to wear funny hats, give speeches, drink whiskey and smoke cigars; middle-aged sisters in piled-up hair and too-tight gowns no longer gossip about the family while waiting for their plates of chicken and mashed potato. The phones no longer ring, the parking lot is empty, the gift shop bare. Nothing that remains is connected, nothing coherent, nothing even as purposeful as a child's belly-flop into a crowded pool. The style of getting away that people did here is as vanished as the city they were getting away from. What has fallen into ruins is not a place but a way of being.

 

I dreamt I was standing here, outside in the rain, and I asked a woman, "What did you leave behind?" And she answered, "My mother and my father."

Off-Season

 

Nothing happens here. Men no longer gather to wear funny hats, give speeches, drink whiskey and smoke cigars; middle-aged sisters in piled-up hair and too-tight gowns no longer gossip about the family while waiting for their plates of chicken and mashed potato. The phones no longer ring, the parking lot is empty, the gift shop bare. Nothing that remains is connected, nothing coherent, nothing even as purposeful as a child's belly-flop into a crowded pool. The style of getting away that people did here is as vanished as the city they were getting away from. What has fallen into ruins is not a place but a way of being.

 

I dreamt I was standing here, outside in the rain, and I asked a woman, "What did you leave behind?" And she answered, "My mother and my father."

Off-Season

 

Nothing happens here. Men no longer gather to wear funny hats, give speeches, drink whiskey and smoke cigars; middle-aged sisters in piled-up hair and too-tight gowns no longer gossip about the family while waiting for their plates of chicken and mashed potato. The phones no longer ring, the parking lot is empty, the gift shop bare. Nothing that remains is connected, nothing coherent, nothing even as purposeful as a child's belly-flop into a crowded pool. The style of getting away that people did here is as vanished as the city they were getting away from. What has fallen into ruins is not a place but a way of being.

 

I dreamt I was standing here, outside in the rain, and I asked a woman, "What did you leave behind?" And she answered, "My mother and my father."