ON A HILL OUT WEST

One of the effects of shelter-in-place has been that some of us get up earlier and more alert everyday. Not the two women who live directly opposite; their curtains are still drawn, and the computer geek couple down the block are clearly evening people too. But the chap with the green hair who lives on the top floor returned to the building with a cup of coffee while I was lighting up on the steps. He was bright and sparkling.

[Note: in the western show my apartment mate is watching with her breakfast cereal the sheriff just shot a man. The stuffed turkey vulture also likes Tombstone Territory and Bat Masterson. Remarkably, these are versions of the Old West with incessant poker games and seemingly no cigarettes. Odd.]

Up on Larkin one person already out and about was a man pushing his kid in a bright-hued plastic racecar. No dog-walkers. The hounds apparently don't poo before coffee and donuts.

As I was heading back, the auntie with the pistacchio-coloured sunhat (開心果色嘅帽) left her building for her morning exercise half a block ahead, we exchanged good morning (早晨 'jou san') from a safe distance.

An old gentleman on my block was fussing with his wheel-lugs (or whatever those things are) on the ground, paying no mind to the strewn garbage from the apartment building nearby. Planks. Plastic. Cardboard. Little packaged wipes. Two dresser drawers. I know it wasn't his, I had crossed the spread on my way up. And I he lives one block over.

When I entered my building, pistachio hat auntie was still tromping up and down the block. She's making noticible progress; more energy, and further down the hill each week.


That first smoke of the day, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that.
I love the smell of pipe tobacco in the morning. Smells like... victory.

It smells like Aged Red Virginia.

TOBACCO INDEX


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