Bursting with color

The things we find in store window displays
Boca Raton, FL
December 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

In the Before Times, we occasionally went to shopping malls for the heck of it and deliberately sought out new experiences, like spontaneous conversations with the guy selling artsy retro pastel-painted bicycles from a kiosk, or gawk sessions over the stunning artworks at a newly opened gallery.

The goal wasn't so much to consume, but to get out there, to disconnect from the day-to-day, and just immerse ourselves in the delightful variability of collective urban human life. Retail space as community centre was apparently a thing.

In the After Times, of course, this notion is terrifying. The operative goal now is to put as much distance between ourselves and strangers, to hunker down, alone or surrounded by immediate family and no one else. Isolate instead of connect.

Which makes me appreciate scenes like this, furtively captured during a particularly memorable outing with the fam, that much more.

It also makes me appreciate the fact that new experiences and pandemic life aren't mutually exclusive.

We may have to be a bit more creative in teasing them out. But they're out there. It's up to us to look harder for them.

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