Fading retail against a blue sky

Look up, anyway
London, ON
November 2020
This photo originally shared on Instagram

If you haven't photo-walked around the outside of a fading local mall lately, I highly recommend it.

The architecture may seem forgettable. No one ever wrote effusively worded magazine articles when this place was built, and time hasn't done it any favors. The dollar store shoppers illegally parked in the fire lane to save themselves four steps can hardly be bothered to take in the concrete-block design as they rush inside in search of plastic wreaths and off-brand toothpaste.

Yet there's something to be said for being out here among the madding crowds, trying to coax something, anything from a haphazardly designed and built structure that's never been asked to tell its story.

I wonder if I should be here at all. So do the dollar store shoppers, who have now returned to their selfishly parked pickups and are staring at the weird guy wandering around the lot with a camera in his hand.

If they weren't so busy texting and driving, they'd be welcome to join me - safely distanced, of course - to explore a place that doesn't seem to invite exploration.

Or maybe it does, but we've convinced ourselves we're too busy to notice.

Maybe there's virtue in otherwise humble slivers of the local landscspe, going about their lives quietly, asking nothing from those who unwittingly rely on them more than they'd ever admit.

Maybe we'd all do well to wander the parking lot every once in a while and wonder about the places that shape our day-to-day lives.

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