Rebirth Station

The small brightly lit room is just off a highly trafficked street, but it is late night and the cars are no longer passing by with their screeching tires and rumbling engines.  The pedestrians have all long gone home and the street is almost eerily quiet. 
The room used to be a store front of some kind, but those days are long gone and now it stands almost devoid of personality.  The walls are white and bare- the overhead lighting is blunt in its effectiveness, just bare bulbs screwed into the ceiling.  It is basic at its more stark- like a prison cell.  There are bars over the front plate glass window, which in theory protects the inhabitants from any wandering predators outside.  The window is blocked from the street not just by metal bars but also by a large single piece of white painted particle board. The room is rectangular, efficient in its size. 
Half a dozen people fill the room, all of them sitting in cheap cushioned chairs that are decades old.  There is a heavy set young woman sitting on a chair towards the back left corner,  she has a crocheted multicolored blanket across her knees.  Her skin is pale and her hair is dark and stringy- she looks sixteen or seventeen and very small.  She looks lost in the expanse of the room, lost even though I can see her and she can see me. 
Five feet away from her is a man in his 20s, he has a scraggly blond beard and a tiny pot belly covered by a blue tank top with orange edging.  Next to him, his 2 year old son sits happily on a chair.  Almost all the eyes in the room are on the boy, a somewhat happy and clueless child who does not seem to mind being in the white vacuum of the space.
There is a young woman with dark hair closer to the door.  Her arms are on her knees as she leans over, looking into my eyes. Her face is desolate, her eyes dull and without any expression, like she has seen a thousand horrible acts and closed herself off to all of them, resigned to her fate now.
In front of me, the only thing on the wall, is a cardboard cutout of a TV set.  It is designed to look like an old fashioned analog TV with two knobs that were once used to change channels.  It looks like something left over from an art class, perhaps a project critical of the media. The screen area is grayed out and the entire thing is two dimensional.
It is silent in the room.  I can’t even hear the buzzing of the lights.

Strip Mall

The sun has just left the sky, leaving the faintest glow of yellow hovering close to the horizon. Twilight is all around. Feathering out from the yellow-lit hue is a pale blue which fades abruptly into deep cobalt and purple-black. Several seagulls cross the sky silhouetted against the pale blue night.

I am sitting under the thick metal awning of a short strip mall on the outskirts of a sprawling apartment complex. Squat, two-story condos and tall apartment buildings are interspersed like a twenty minute long checkers match, they stretch for blocks and blocks, creating a mini-city. To the left, several hundred feet behind the grocery store at the end of the strip mall, is an apartment building standing twenty stories tall. A few of the windows are lit from inside, though the majority of them are dark. In front of me, just beyond the parking lot, is a long two-story apartment building that vaguely references Greek architecture with its two white pillars on either side of the main front door.

There are twelve different businesses all sharing the same long florescent-lit awning. At one end is the mid-sized supermarket with a front-facing glass wall. Covering the glass wall are an assortment of neon beer signs that each vie for attention. They blare their colorful message into the night, looking for thirsty eyes and loose wallets. On the other end of the strip-mall is a lonely-singular ATM that stands unprotected against the night. A solitary bulb embedded in the awning shines down, illuminating the money machine.

Between the two anchor points are a dozen storefronts. I sit out front, at the only outdoor table drenched in the glow of an arabica bean-scented coffee shop. My white paper to-go cup of milk-drenched tea rests on the table to my left, the cup still too hot for my fingers to hold. Two men play chess at a small table directly behind me, we are separated only by a thick glass pane and a thousand other invisible walls. Next door, a brightly-lit laundromat hums with the sound of tumbling clothes and a screeching baby that takes short breaths between wails. Three young Asian guys are standing just outside the open doorway to the laundromat. They talk amongst themselves in gangsta accents, simultaneously laughing together and making fun of each other.

Closer to the market at the end is a burger place with a sporty, Hall of Fame theme. There is an ice cream parlor, a smoke shop that sends the constant perfume of nagchampa drifting out its open door, a pizza place, a kick boxing school and two other small storefronts under construction. The steady tap and boom of the construction work mingles with the insistent hum of dryers and swishing washers. Somewhere above, a jumbo jet cuts through the sky, its noisy engines rattling the metal table and the contents of my paper cup.

Beyond the storefronts and sidewalk is a small parking lot with a hundred spaces, though only a handful are occupied by silent cars. Just beyond the lot is a narrow street lined with glowing street lamps and one large silhouetted cypress stands tall and dark against the changing sky.

Confectionery

On the edge of a worn asphalt driveway, embedded in the graying tar substance that was new and fresh decades before, is a large sign atop a wide cream-white metal post. The sign sits thirty feet above the parking lot that is littered with crumbling pebbles of asphalt.
The sign is unlike most, neither a rectangle or square, neither circle or oval. It is at least four feet across and three feet high and it is a blend of many shapes. Its right side is curved like a circle, though it extends down into a point both above and below. The left side is a mix of curve and point as well. The interior space is painted in a creamy white. The edging around the sign is painted pale pink as is the vertical script lettering in the center which reads, ‘Shaw’s Plaza.’ The shape and style and lettering of the sign speaks of a by-gone era of architecture, but the sign and post itself are in good form without any signs of rust or wear besides a general fading of color.
Below the sign is a another smaller rectangular white sign that is painted and has black lettering that is a little to the left of center. It says, ‘Sweet Memories Confectionery.’ The letters are spelled with the kind of temporary plastic letters used in movie theater marquees, though the letters themselves look static and slightly worn and small compared to the painted sign above.
The parking lot itself is large and mostly bare without any distinguishing lines to delineate individual parking spots. A single blue minivan is parked. It’s side door is open and a Latin man with tan skin sits on the floor of the van, his feet finding comfort on the asphalt driveway. Two children hover around him with half-eaten ice cream cones in their sticky hands.
Across the parking lot from the sign and the minivan is a building whose front is made of plate glass windows and whose wooden sides take turns between blue, white and pink. The edges of the building are lined with light bulbs in precise intervals, looking like permanent, over-sized Christmas lights. The bulbs line the thin, flat roof and they line the vertical edge where two walls meet. Some of the bulbs are gray, some are missing, but most remain in place, perhaps waiting for darkness.
The building faces the street and sidewalk, looking at the world through glass windows. From the street in front, it is hard to see inside the store because of the flat roof that extends over the building and to the edge of the sidewalk. The extended flat roof provides the thick shade for the patio, which sits between the sidewalk and the actual entrance to the shop which at least fifteen feet from the sidewalk.
There are 6 circular white metal tables on the cement patio. Four hard plastic chairs are clustered around each table, each chair being either pink, blue or white. The legs for each chair are not singular metal legs, but instead are wide metal triangles. Two metal triangles emerge from the bottom of each seat, they extend at an 35 degree angle and the base of the triangle rests along the patio floor. The tables are unoccupied and covered with the shade of the thick flat roof above.
Beyond the plate glass windows is a fully stocked candy shop. Bins of liquorice, peppermint and strawberry taffy sit in individual wooden baskets. By the long counter beside the register is a glass case full of fudge in different forms, some white, some marbled, some mixed with nuts or topped with toffee. The simple glass shelves that line the walls facing the street are crowded with bags of jelly candies in every imaginable shape and color. There are green beans, blue sharks, pink bears, rainbow colored ropes, orange smiles, and purple worms.
Towards the side of the shop is a glass wall facing the parking lot. There are several more circular white metal table on that bright end of the shop. Surrounding each table are four white metal chairs with red vinyl seats.
The smell of sugar escapes from the open glass door and into the front patio, as does the loud metal music coming from a radio behind the counter. A man’s gravelly voice bellows, ‘search aaaannnd seek and destroooyyyyyyy!”

Discount Store

A large warehouse space is dimly lit. The overall space is submerged in a grayish hue, though sparse yellow bulbs hang from single black wires clinging to the ceiling every fifteen feet. They hang like the stars, thirty feet from the ground, their light flickering like distant voices from eons past. Gray comes from the high cinderblock walls without windows and the cement floor that breaths a cold, unrelenting truth.
The space is divided into thirty long aisles by twelve-foot tall metal shelves. They shelves are heavy and solid, built for industry and the test of time. Each shelving unit has ten individual shelves packed with old cans of vegetables and beans, fruit cocktail, and dusty sacks of rice and dried lentils. Thirty rows fill the warehouse space, each one thirty feet long.
The discount store is empty of people, though full of old dented goods that await use, to have just one more moment of life. A refrigerated section hums in the far left corner, it alone emitting bright white florescent light, like the opening of a tunnel to another plane of reality. The cold section is stocked with several varieties of packaged tofu, still within their expiration date. There are cartons of milk and large chunks of yellow cheese packaged in cellophane. The light radiates out a few dozen steps from the cold section, illuminating a few hand-made ceramic sinks that sit on the ground beside a tall metal shelf propped against the wall.
In the first aisle from the wall, a magical knife rests on the floor below the first shelf of the unit. It stands out like a giant phallus in the store of mass production, one of only two things made with human hands and careful attention. It is large and mostly flat, curved like a bow, with a long dragon-like head at one point. It is made of silvery-black clay and a small careful sigil is carved into the forehead of the creature. It sits without a speck of dust in the shadow of the tall shelves piled high with cans of black garbanzo beans and peas.
A lone worker stands in the front of the store, behind a row of elevated cash registers, like silent players on a stage. The young man stands ready for a store of empty customers. His black hair manages to shine in the dim yellow light, somehow coming alive despite the gray of the walls and floor and absence of fresh new life. His tan skin pops out of his thin, tight white t-shirt, a testament to sun and melanin and vigor. He is comfortable here in his place, a king in this square castle of old goods and their hidden treasures.

Shopping Center

The streets are populated with shiny cars in the bright rainbow colors of fruit flavored candy. They are red and bright yellow and dark blue. Some are black or silver or gold. All glisten in the sun like brand new toys. The streets are a velvety gray, smooth with clean crisp painted lines. They are new fairways not yet tainted with tire marks and oil slicks. Circling and winding from one tall stop light to the next, they snake their way around the clean shopping centers and chain restaurants. The whole place is clean and bright. The walls of the box stores are anonymous and painted in warm cream colors, the store names are written in brand appropriate fonts across the front of the building faces in blue or white or yellow. They are un-chipped, void of any stray marks. So new that weather hasn’t been able to take its toll and vandals are still rubbing their eyes in astonishment, licking their lips and rubbing their palms together in anticipation of the day when security diminishes, but those days are yet to come. For now security carts patrol the parking lots like mother hens looking over nests of eggs. The planter boxes are filled with neatly trimmed shrubbery. Little trees that look like toothpicks with gumdrops set upon their points stand as proud as tin soldiers in the cement boxes outside of the glass store fronts. Grass rolls out in a fine green carpet alongside the walkways that lead to the smoky colored glass doors of the box restaurants. Lanky irises yawn up out of little islands set in the parking lots accompanied by skinny little maples that dream of making shade some day. Meanwhile, the shiny cars nose up to them, resting in tidy rows reserved by clean white lines. The traffic lights hang over the intersections that join dining establishments to malls to movie theaters like gawky tall young ladies. Their three bright eyes blink green to yellow to red under their steel black bonnets, holding lines of eager cars at bay with their crimson blush. Pedestrians, mostly teens, flow through the clearly delineated crosswalks guided by the electronic chirp chirp and flashing blue symbol that barely resembles them with their styled hair and skinny jeans, hoop earrings and music T-shirts, skateboards and chunky hand bags tucked under their arms. They mill about in front of the cinema gazing up at the white marquee board with its bold black letters announcing titles, show times, and ratings. More people file in and out of the box stores and main mall entrances, chatting on cell phones or rattling keys, or both at once, carrying boxes and bags, pushing carts with whinny toddlers strapped into the front like the dragon masts of Viking ships. Satisfied diners pick at their teeth with toothpicks and jingle change in their slack pockets in front of the restaurants. They hurry back to their shiny metal hosts to rouse them from their restful slumber, like parents rousing babies in a nursery to claim them and take them home. Only these babies roar and speed along over the posted limit. They are directed along those clean new stretches of road by the gangly traffic lights that hope to imitate rainbows with their perfectly arched spines. These babies puff out little invisible clouds of exhaust, filling the causeway with their chemical breath. They bleat like lambs when they fear they will bump noses with one another, or if the one in line ahead of the others is being too timid or law abiding, they may all join in a chorus of bleated complaints. With no lanes for bicycles or scooters, these must make their way amid the metal monster babes at their own risk, like puppies hopping to avoid their tails getting crushed.

Bookstore

There is the sound of a shoe heel making contact with a wooden floorboard. After a couple seconds, there is another distinct sound. A subdued orchestra of shoe heels moves through the large high-ceilinged room. Without any obvious beat or rhythm, they come in scattered intervals, filling the otherwise quiet space. Dozens of people are milling about slowly, their attention turned exclusively to the many shelves of books. No one is talking, each is lost in their own world of words and paper. Just the sound of slow footsteps and the soft turning of a book page is audible. The soft gold-tinged light of late afternoon filters in through the overhead skylights, the sweet light electrifies the colored book spines and they glow from their resting spots like dilated animal eyes, aglow with possibility. Like the reading room of kings, the walls are completely covered in dark wooden bookshelves. The periphery of the room is a colored spectrum of rectangular book spines that stand neatly upright on their deep shelves. The walls reach at least twenty feet high, and the shelves, crowded with books, reach to the place where wall and ceiling converge. There is not a trace of wall in this house of books, where it not for gravity, the ceiling space would be in use as well. Rolling ladders have been installed to the upper-most wooden shelf lip to facilitate the browsing of books closer to the heavens. This is a well-ordered bookstore, where books of the same genre are grouped together and books are alphabetized by author.
Every stone’s throw, there are plush, high backed armchairs against the bookcases/walls. Each well-worn mauve velvet chair is occupied with a reading patron, and other customers sit with their legs crossed on the floor, browsing through potential purchases. Within the center of the room are islands of wooden tables. The tables are spaced far enough apart so customers can walk and flow around them, checking out the literature from all sides of the table. The tables are old and heavy, with thick sculpted legs and beautiful honey colored wood tops. Just a sliver of tabletop is visible beneath the well organized stacks of books. Each table is devoted to a specific genre. Children’s literature, new releases, mythology…the I Ching is on the corner of a table. A woman in her twenties, with tan skin and long dark hair browses the table with intensity, looking for something specific. There is a small two-shelf black rolling cart, the kind usually found in libraries. A handful of red paperback books has fallen from the cart. The books lay in a scattered pile upon the floor.

Immortal Store

It is a tiny and historic little cove of storefronts, a post office, a locksmith, a few empty buildings. Each one is petite, nestled in with its neighbors like the residents of a home for the elderly snuggled together on one faded couch. Plaster has chipped away from the walls revealing red bricks, dust has gathered thickly in window corners, paint is wrinkling and peeling from doorways. Each one has its own distinct character. A few have aged better than others. Well cared for, they smile with cheerful dignity and the wisdom of their age, wearing newer coats of paint on the architecture of bygone eras.
At the very center of this horseshoe gathering, at the end of the cove, one building seems imbued with the enchantments of immortality. Its white columns set it apart in style from its cronies, lending it a classical elegance. Its front door is hidden just five or six little accordion steps below street level, like the pouty lips of a sophisticated woman veiled by a fan. Delicate lace curtains hang like down turned eye lashes in the tall lean rectangular windows that flank the door. Inside, shelves are littered with an array of antiques and ruffled niceties. Crystal platters lay among potpourri sachets tied with bronze colored satin ribbons. Fluted flower vases display little pink rosebuds with thread frayed edges and sprays of tiny acrylic pearls. Most prevalent however are the crowded rows of fine china dolls, forced together like schoolgirls for a class picture. They are lined up together on shelves high and low. Shiny little ringlets of amber, gold, and chestnut hang out from under sailors caps and bonnets and around smiling cherub faces. Red lips, pink lips, peach lips, perfect little noses, and dimpled cheeks, creamy unmarred complexions, all of these features complement their merrily sparkling glass eyes. Blue, green, brown, and even violet, they look out from under thick dark eyelashes, unblinking and unperturbed, frozen in an eternal moment of mirth.
Many clean little dresses hang from racks upon the walls. They are of various sizes and styles, all handmade of satin, crepe, lace, and cotton, accented with little satin rosebuds and bows. A small counter built of panels of white wood plays hostess to a cash register set on top of an over sized crochet doily. The dolls wait expectantly along the walls throughout the store, but those behind the register seem especially demanding of adoration. They are piled upon tiers of shelving behind the little white counter, legs dangling from under luxurious little petticoats.
There are boxes on the floor filled with older dolls of less refinement and worth. Cabbage patch dolls with rubber faces and hair of yellow or orange yarn lie face down among an endless supply of grinning Troll dolls with their tanned pot bellies and tufts of neon hair. An old broken rocking horse is hidden in one corner, lost among the new white wicker carriages designed for carrying elegant dolls. A rusty blue and yellow aluminum top keeps it company, as well as an old tin lunch box turned so that its face can’t be seen. The space itself is very narrow and all of the antiques and toys, seem almost invisible crowded as they are, each stealing the others thunder. The overall effect is an atmosphere of clutter. Only the china dolls behind the register can contend with the silent clamor, drawing attention to themselves through their sameness and unity of perfection.
A powder blue door leads into a small back room another two steps down. In here there are more boxes filled with things that wouldn’t fit or fetch a high price. The majority of the space is occupied by a large, neatly made brass bed attended by an armoire and a petite dresser with an oval mirror. There is a window behind the bed with a sheer white curtain hung over it. Light breathes in through the gossamer fabric, and the shadows of greenery on the other side can be seen pressing upon the glass. Another door opens into a bathroom no bigger than a closet. Within, the porcelain is white and clean and the golden fixtures are polished to gleaming brightness. The floor however, reveals its age in the form of cracked tiles and yellowed grout.

A City Corner

It is a noisy, dirty corner in the heart of a large city. The streets that meet here are both wide, full of heavy traffic and constantly covered in groups of pedestrians walking back and forth from one sidewalk to the other. A large truck is double parked on the southeastern side, three men sit on the edge of the bed and a large mechanical dolly sits on the sidewalk, unused. Two men walk from east to west, drinking from bottles covered in paper bags, loudly discussing the events of the day. An older woman, wearing a large blond wig and a tight mini skirt, smokes by the donut shop on the north western corner. A neon sign of a nude woman blinks in and out from the covered front window of a massage parlor that stands next to a freshly painted liquor store on the northeastern corner. A little boy grabs onto his mother’s hand, dragging a plastic bag behind him, gently sobbing away the remains of a heartfelt tantrum.
On the south western corner there is a one story complex. A small adult shop is embraced on both sides by a single dilapidated house that wraps around it. It has two facades, leading to either street, both with a little forgotten porch covered in trash and solid steel gates.
The adult shop has only four faded porno tapes on its window, the lost glories of never quite beautiful women that have long lost their battle for men’s attention and are now forgotten symbols of wasteful dispersal that fail in their weak attempt at temptation. Inside the shop, behind the counter, is an older bearded man wearing a baseball cap and reading the newspaper. A TV screen behind him shows intense intercourse between a black man and a blond girl, the volume turned down while the radio blares out right wing talk radio and old rock and roll songs. The man groans every once in a while and turns the page. Two Latin men stare at a magazine and make whispered comments. An older single man in a black overcoat carefully runs through the many video sections, scanning every title and every so often grabbing a box and putting it under his arm. A sweaty brown skinned man stands by the dark door that leads to the private booths, anxiously staring at each of the men that walk in and out of the store. Another door, dusty and forgotten between rows of video tapes and plastic dildos, leads to the larger residence that surrounds the place.
The house is shaped like a thick L, with each end crowned by an elegant wooden door that leads to the outside. Inside, the light is low and shaded in red and green. At the corner of the "L" there is a long table, covered in a ripped and stained tablecloth, where two women and two men sit on small metal chairs. One woman prepares a crack pipe, wearing only a slip over a pair of tight shorts, while one of the men, a skinny older Caucasian wearing thick glasses and a sleeveless undershirt, anxiously stares and waits. The other two angrily discuss their current situation, always precarious, always on the brink of a complete catastrophe that has already started but never quite comes to an end. The man is a middle aged Latino, wearing jeans and a buttoned up shirt. The woman is older and hints of sadness and deep resignation recurrently wash over her wrinkled face. She wears a black T-shirt and a ripped red skirt.
Behind the table, there is a broken door that leads to a long bathroom. Inside, behind a ripped plastic curtain, there is a stretched out shower stall with three different shower heads, designed so that three or more bodies can bathe simultaneously. The tiled floor is covered in grime and smells of urine and sperm. A young boy sits on the ground, playing with tiny plastic soldiers, making soft explosive sounds with his mouth each time one the little figures gets shot. The only light that seeps into the bathroom comes from a high little window that also brings with it the constant wave of screams, curses and laughter that wash in from the alleyway outside.
In a small very dark room, the light banished with two layers of curtains and a thick old blanket taped to the window, a young Latin girl lies sleeping on a ripped up mattress. She is covered in cold sweat and wears only a thin summer dress. Her breathing is shallow and labored, her face squeezes painfully every few minutes and her dried tears have left a spider web of discolored makeup all over her cheekbones. Hanging on the wall close to her head there is a little wooden crucifix and taped up underneath it, the photograph of an older smiling woman with gray hair.
In one of the hallways that leads to the street, two shirtless teenage boys smoke marijuana and trade jokes and conspiracies amongst themselves. One of them has a large scar across his chest and a fresh bruise around his right eye. The other one has two fingers missing from his left hand and he uses the stumps to scratch his running nose. Using the joints as pointers, they discuss places and possibilities, people and betrayals, histories and legends. In their words, a trail of bubbling life pierces through the scratched up walls and the pungent smell of vomit that seeps in through the outer gates, along with loud horns, angry threats and a crackling radio playing an ancient song of harvest.