Fading Desert Footprints (Complete)

"Only the pure in heart can make a good soup." Beethoven

I am tired after yoga from sweating, and with thinking of tomorrow. Instead of pale, the world is blinding white, and I look at the ground as I walk. It is a hot day and the sidewalks are desolate.

I hear people talking in the distance, excited and happy sounds that grow as I get closer to my house. It is coming from Jack's backyard, across the street.

My house is simple and practical. Mel's house is nicer, and immaculate. Jack's mansion is luxurious, and pristine, worthy of being featured in one of those magazines or TV shows that make you envious of what other people have. If the wine we serve dinner guests represented the house we live in, no one in our neighbourhood would be presented with a glass of homemade wine; two blocks away are boxed wine apartment rentals. Farther down the road, are hastily build infill condominiums where you can expect a mass produced cosmopolitan wine. My house is a local store California Cabernet Sauvignon, Mel's is a boutique Napa Cab; Jack's is a French Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, Grand Cru.

His front stone steps are large smooth slabs of rock, neatly placed and grouted. They make my interlocking bricks look like Lego blocks.

Parallel rows of lights and a wide border of pansies and lilacs lead past the gate into a tall vined lattice. The backyard fence is lined with cedar hedges. It looks like a path to Eden.

Occasionally, I have glimpsed his backyard when the gate had been left open. There is a shimmering kidney shaped lake in his Shangri-La with a concrete island in the middle. For serious swimming, one would travel around the edge, in a circle, counting laps instead of lengths. However, exercise swimming wouldn't be the aim in this pool; the island had four  chairs beside the swim up bar; the type I've paid a fortune to have at five star Caribbean resorts.

Scattered throughout are inviting chaises and loungers, some umbrellas, at least one hammock, and two round enclosed wicker chairs suspended from chains. My bargain fold up plastic implements are uncomfortable even with ample cushions on them.

I hear Ruth talking; she does not reside on our street; she lives in the store bought Cabernet that shares a backyard fence with Jack. Her voice is loud and raspy; she sounds like a man. This was created by years of smoking, which she still does, despite her lung cancer and emphysema. More dangerous still, she uses a walker to move, and carries an oxygen cylinder with a small tube leading into her nose. I always stay clear of her, afraid she might explode one day when lighting a cigarette. Yet I admire her outlook. She is terminally ill, and I overheard her carrying voice one day, as she lectured Jack while I eavesdropped.

"This world is screwed up. Our ancestors did just fine living out in the open. Now, we've extended our life span by decades, but we still find it impossible to accept that we might die. We should be used to the outdoors, but the sun now gives us melanoma so we douse ourselves with lotion just in case a stray ray should peek through the clouds. We can't breathe the air on hot humid days. All the foods we used to eat are now mysteriously unhealthy, so even though we actually live longer, they tell us to eat less sugar and fat, as if they want to stave off the trend. Then, when you're 200 years old, and croak, they have to do an autopsy to determine the cause because old age isn't acceptable anymore, as if all of us are expected to be immortal. And in the meantime, everyone works their whole life, buys a house, saves their pennies, and in the end, sells it all to pay a doctor who promises a few extra hours in this world. Screw that, I've only got a few weeks left, and I'm going to enjoy every second to the max, so if I crave a cancer stick, I might have two. What damn good is a healthy lifestyle gonna do me now anyway, eh? Extend my life by three seconds so I can say 'good bye' to your sorry ass? I won't need my liver much longer either, so I'll have a rye too. On second thought, make it a triple, but not that piss you keep by the pool, I want the gold label stuff that you hide in the dining room cabinet; like the one I finished last time." She has a witch's croak for a laugh.