Tuesday, October 20th, 2020

A man nearly collides with me on a narrow sidewalk. He’s looking down -- not at a phone, but at a small painting that he has picked up from a trash heap. He moves and tilts it to catch the light from street lamps as he walks. As I wait for a traffic light down the road, I look back to where he was. He is gone. The painting rests on a bench, facing out. A few blocks further on, I get another omelette sandwich at the new bakery. They are priced at twenty shekels, but a worker, without prompting, sells it to me for ten. The bakery is about to close for the night, so I guess he figures that selling it to me cheap is better than throwing it out. I flash back to when I would travel from Delaware to Philadelphia every other weekend, some twenty-five years ago. I would hang out in the bakery at the railroad station until the last train arrived. When they closed, they would give the remaining unsold goods away to whoever was around. Across from the new bakery, the much smaller storefront where it had been has been gutted. Piles of trash lean against stripped drywall and punctuate the cement floor. I wonder what will go in there. I don’t expect anything new to show up until after the lockdowns end. I sit in the city square and eat the sandwich. The usual crowd of caregivers and elders gradually leaves. A young man at the next table plays show tunes from the speaker on his phone. He finishes his falafel, attaches his phone to his bicycle, and heads off. The voice of Barbara Streisand echoes and fades as he rides away.