July 17, 2022
Clement’s shop lives on a street full of life —
not the life that spends its waking hours “getting ahead” by adorning facades in the world of white collar American employment, but a life who lives in second story flats above dive bars and barber shops, in dining rooms where foggy afternoon sunlight filters through layers of faded floral window drapes and dusty single pane windows and beams its misty shimmering rays on chipped kitchen tiling and fraying wooden floorboards where this ethereal warm evening glow lasts forever and gives the shadows of the room a familial belonging,
a life with countertops and furniture worn and marked by lives that they were once and are now part of,
a life of children born, raised, crying, playing, laughing, families, at times forlorn, at times exulted,
a life that can catch its eye on the perpetual glide of a speck of dust floating in a beam of sunset,
a life with no past and no future but that equally has more history and more potential than any I will know,
a life which will go on forever just as it ever has,
a life that is quiet, and taking its time, unhurried and unburdened by lives like mine,
a life I will never live.