mallitis

I went to Destiny USA today not to shop but merely for human intercourse, meaning not that but the sounds of footsteps, blather, shrieks, cries, laughs, arguments, mumbles, interjections, interruptions, sulks, swerves, objections, enthusiasms, profanities, sneezes, coughs, and the incessant undercurrent of fingers brushing across or up and down the screens of "devices." The new town square is neither in downtown nor square. I sat on a bench in front of the Apple store and wrote about Iceland. I exchanged texts as my unsmartphone chimed owing to its Outdoor setting. Some texts I ignored in deference to finishing a thought as I composed my Icelandic travelogue. I bought nothing. I sought to "create coincidence." As I was leaving, I ran into three people I know. We spoke. By then, the blare of the place was getting on my nerves. Had to go. And did.

tiny Destiny

The sneak peak of Destiny in Syracuse was a tiny glimpse of I'm-not-sure-what. With more than 800,000 square feet to fill, Pyramid has its hands full. Or empty. So far, the early returns are:

-- open spaces, lots

-- some pleasant textures of imitation, or real, pavers

-- inline kiosks

-- two stores in one, Lenox china / Hartmann luggage

-- lots of billboards of What Is To Come

-- some curvilinear frontage to the new store(s), which is more interesting than the prison-like blandness on the outside


My review: looks like Philadelphia airport at best. A mix of would-be highbrow and flea market.

What is so "green" about it?

We shall see.

one-sentence meditation upon a sympathy card

Commissioned by my wife to buy a sympathy card for her sister-in-law's father, someone I had never met (well, not for him; he's dead; a card for my spouse's sister-in-law and her family), I ambled into the Hallmark Gold Crown store (sure, I did in fact recently join the retailer's crown rewards [trademark but not i-capped on the thingy I got in the mail] program) at Carousel Center mall, destined to be Destiny USA, or Arendi, or more precisely likely predestined to be a cavernous echo of the last of our swollen appetites (appetites are so pre-recession), I browsed the variegated racks of offerings as displayed by signs, like highway markers or exit announcements (after all, an exit is what made me enter this retail outlet): Retirement, New Home, Get Well, New Job, Birthday, Thinking of You, Encouragement, and realized, albeit whimsically if not flippantly (and shared as much with the mother and daughter or mother and sister near me, garnering a nervous chuckle), that all such markers are but synonyms for Sympathy, conceding that our Buddhist friends are right in saying that all things are connected.

LIFE, continued

I've told you before of the graffito LIFE in Burnet Park, once there, then gone, scrubbed, scoured, painted over.

I saw LIFE again yesterday.

LIFE moved (to at least two places) over on Hiawatha Boulevard, Syracuse, not far from the imagined world of Destiny USA. Emblazoned in uppercase letters amid industrial detritus, debris, and abandonment.

I was grateful to see some LIFE yesterday. It gave me some hope.

Today I imagine LIFE was there, a little elusive, shrouded in twilight, but I did not see it directly.

I was cast into twilight. I am bathed in twilight.

I am living in a zone of twilight.

But LIFE awaits. . . as a statement, a fact, not merely posed as a question.