Gentle days in the alley

some quiet thoughts

Summery windows and doors are more often left open, and odors waft out through them, upwards, to me, on the top floor. Cooking smells are particularly tantalizing on days when I’m too lazy to put in the requisite effort myself, invoking images of savory, satisfying curry or perhaps the sizzle of perfectly seasoned meat. Incense, mosquito repellent, burning bread: it all floats up. The odor of coffee perking below could get me out of bed some days.

**

The structure behind my building continues to edge toward completion; the shell is done now. There is still buzzing and whizzing more often than not. I watched marble edging being laid along the rooftop wall, and it’s also appeared as windowsills for openings otherwise empty.

Above all these, a shiny new metal water tank sits, dwarfed inside a hefty metal structure, almost a cage. I wonder if that will make it safer in a potential earthquake, less likely to roll off the roof, or maybe it would make no difference at all and it’s just cosmetic. Still, it stands out amongst our neighbourhood’s mostly plastic tanks in black and blue and green that sit at the highest possible point on each building, like the garnish on a cocktail.

**

In the house out front, the residents continue their prodigious gardening; one of the two avocado trees that were regrowing wildly has been cut down, its remaining stump now home to a water dish for the birds. Two logs alongside might be a seating space, or perhaps are just returning gently back to the land. The remaining avocado is flourishing, huge and green, taking advantage of all the rain and space, alongside the two bright, circular flower beds. Taro leaves are larger every time I look, and a ginormous squash plant, variety as yet unknown (to me), now spreads across eight or ten meters down their north garden wall, bigger than it has any right to be. There will no shortage of its produce, whatever it is.

**

The rains too, have settled into routine, usually in the afternoon and more often at night, though today they’ve yet to make an appearance. Instead, a bright, refreshing, laundry-drying, door-slamming wind has been cheerfully making its presence felt, teasing a storm it has yet to deliver, finally giving way instead to bright evening skies.

It’s been a good day in the alley.