Outdoor Furniture, Cybertrucks, and Boats
A brief break in the sweltering weather this week gave us a temporary reprieve from the heat seemingly suffocating the East Coast. As always, we are grateful for any brief breaks from extreme weather, knowing that something worse is almost always on the way.
Living Room with Construction View
A curious tableau appeared this week on a thoroughfare under construction. Two days prior, city crews had announced that the sidewalks on the west side of the road would be under repair for several days, necessitating a full shutdown of the stretch — just under a mile — that serves a fair number of joggers and youths on bicycles.
So it came as some surprise when, on the first morning of the repair, the construction crew discovered a complete living room set arranged on the grass opposite the work zone. Adjacent to the eastern sidewalk, beneath the shade of a tall tree, sat a worn but homey loveseat, a small leather couch, a beaten yet dignified off-white coffee table, and an artificial ficus in a genuine wicker basket. The entire scene resembled a living room mistakenly relocated by wayward movers, or perhaps a private box seat meant to watch the proceedings. The unusual display attracted a number of passersby, although none were brave enough to sit — likely deterred by the furniture’s unknown (and possibly dubious) provenance. Unbothered, the crew began their work on the western sidewalk, which lasted roughly a week, during which time the living room began to vanish. First the ficus disappeared, only to reappear half a mile away tucked behind a noise-dampening wall near a gas station. Then the table went missing. Then the couch.
As of this writing, the loveseat remains. And for those curious, the spattering of white across its right arm is not, as suspected, bird droppings, but appears to be bleach staining. Although we suspect that by the time you're dragging a stained loveseat off a public thoroughfare, you've already made peace with some ambiguity.
Driver on Display
It was with mild amusement that we found ourselves stuck behind one of the Salt Lake Valley’s increasing number of Cybertrucks, those clunky, angular behemoths that have been slowly working their way into the local traffic stream. While once novel, the sight of one no longer prompts wonder — only the same resigned curiosity that greets most design choices involving brushed steel.
And yet, on this particular day, we noticed something unusual. After following the vehicle through a series of turns that matched our own, we pulled into a parking lot to complete an errand. Five or six minutes later, as we exited the shop, the same Cybertruck passed by again — traveling in the same direction as before.
We paused to chat with a neighbor who’d also emerged from the store, only to see the Cybertruck circle past a third time, still crawling, still deliberate. By the fourth pass, we were invested. Over the next twenty minutes, the same vehicle and its driver looped slowly around the block, taking corners with exaggerated care and easing past pedestrians with visible purpose — like a child proudly parading a new toy, ensuring it’s noticed.
It would seem the goal was not a destination, but a demonstration. Fortunately, both the Cybertruck and the metaphor it invites run on batteries, and neither can keep going forever.
Ashore
A nautical holdover from yesteryear insists that all men yearn for the sea. This is debatable, of course, but the idea sprang to mind when we encountered a man seated in his fishing boat — in his garage — on a recent warm summer night.
From a small portable speaker, the sound of waves crashed against imaginary rocks. The man, dressed in a comfortably worn tee-shirt and faded denim shorts, reclined in the captain’s chair. He occasionally checked his phone or fiddled with a dial on the console. We saw no fishing rod, no movement toward open water. Just a man, at rest, in his boat, on land.
We chose not to disturb him — not only out of respect for the scene, but because we were concerned that if we lingered too long, we might get seasick several hundred miles from the nearest coast. We didn’t ask where he was headed. He already seemed to be there.