been doing this thing lately where i look up old places i've lived on google street view and just sort of sit with what they are in my memory vs what they are now and impermanence and all that fun shit. did you know all things pass away into dust? wild!
this is the country store in a community of 200 my great-grandfather owned & ran until he died, at which point my gran took over until she was in her eighties & too old to do it. my dad & aunts grew up out there and so did i. they sold it but it's currently sitting vacant, slowing going to seed
you pass a million places like that on back roads in the south, vacant and forgotten, and now i can't help but wonder who lovingly walks through them in their dreams peering into the walk-in beer coolers and ratty backroom toilets of memory as well
one of the lanes that forms the crossroads out front is named after my gran's family. the other one leads to the cemetery where they're all buried. when she used to close up shop at 10 or 11 she'd drive there and leave me in the car while she walked out into the darkness to talk to her mother
now i'm the one walking out there to talk to the dead, but goddamn if it doesn't sometimes feel like i'm still sitting alone in that car with the headlights picking out headstones on the other side of a cyclone fence
