*** ‘Vignette City’ is an ongoing project of daily writing and urban photography ***
The Mayor held a press conference, but he did not take any questions from the press. We just sort of sat there jittery in our seats while he talked at us. Our hands would all always shoot up in unison, all of our lips a little parted with variations of the same question, but he never called on any of us. Our arms waving back and forth. A room of eager school children. Eager for attention. Eager, each of us, for our chance to shine on the world stage. Each of us eager to stand up. Metaphorically, or course.
“And another thing!” The Mayor was moving into hour two and was weaving in and out of a yelling, ranty, circuitous diatribe-y stream-of-consciousness monologue that moved with the grace of an epileptic, schizophrenic tango dancers in Maine. “No more butterflies! What do they even do?”
This press conference had been called so The Mayor could roll out his new city budget.
“And crossing guards. Why should we pay for that? We have lights. We have lots of them. We have the best lights in this city, or we did. Not anymore. We let them all burn out. Maybe that’s why we needed the crossing guards. But not anymore, because I’m not going to pay for that? Is it working? Show me results that it is working!”
Our hands, in an audible wrestling of all of our shirt sleeves, shoot up in a unity of fabric thunder.
“You can’t!” The Mayor said. “See? You can not do it. It can not be done, because it’s not real folks. It just isn’t real. Who ever has even heard of a thing? Crossing guards I’m supposed to pay for now? I don’t know why. I know a lot of things. Some pretty good things folks. And I don’t need a crossing guard. I cross whatever street I want. That’s how our city should be. A big beautiful city.”
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