One of the mysteries of the road: I take a snapshot and then I drive onward. The church, statue or sign might remain the same for years, but I might not see the subject of my photograph ever again. It's as if I wish for a posted photograph that acts as a monitor of the subject. I want the photograph to say when its subject has changed. Sometimes, a photograph will attract witnesses who might post comments that in time update me. But this is still rare: there's not enough witnesses using social media yet. I am pretty sure I will return to Woodstock New York and check up on the street, with a juice bar, a great restaurant and an independence book store all together. As for Delhi, NY, I wonder if I'll ever return to the used book store, most rare, and drink coffee at its counter again. I arrived in town for a coffee and a pit stop because I had strayed off my intended path. It was good to be on the upper reaches of the Delaware River, having crossed the amazing Delaware Water Gap into New Jersey the day before. I talked to three people that day, a seventeen year barista, his twenty-eight year old manager and a woman writing short stories at the table with a view of the street, a county square street with no street traffic on Martin Luther King day. She knew Flannery O'Connor enjoyed the peacocks on the family farm, poor Flannery whose life ended all too short. Damned lupus. Those three lives go blissfully, I hope for a long time, onward. I promised to keep an eye out for her name in the New Yorker. I have forgotten her name but not the direct eye contact with her blue eyes. I remember how she flipped through her small purse as I looked through the plate glass, now a pedestrian.
It is still rainy and warm, the gulf making the Midwest into a Pacific Northwest.
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