By 6:00 the lack of social interaction was getting to me.  So I decided to head to Dominicks.  That could be a lark.  This is the only place I know where more often than not someone will strike up a conversation on a Saturday.  I’ve never figured it out, but to no avail anyway.   This was a quiet Saturday.

Besides it was not the real reason for Dominick’s.  Remembering my last visit to Gene’s, reading about German politics and being at the Indian Independence parade, I have  found myself in the mood for curry-wurst (you might say the secret ingredient is curry powder) and a Becks.  So it is a little after 6:30 and the brats are cooking and soon I will make the sauce.

The parade was a little more muted than the last time I went, though I was able to speak to Tim Wolfe who is running against Jan Schakowsky in the 9th.  His American exceptionalism makes me a little nervous, but being tired of Schankowsky and agreeing somewhat with his tax plan, I may vote for him.  Besides he was at the parade and so his American exceptionalism could well be a broad minded one, much like what many think is the camp I belong in. (I do not consider myself an American exceptionalist, however.)  By 1:00p.m. I had returned home and looked over some stuff I wrote about religion and the 2012 election and decided it was too lengthy to post on a blog.

As the wurst now cooks, I think of how quite the neighborhood is.  The day was relatively cool, the sand hornets not to be found, and the crowd from the parade is gone.  Schools are resuming and in two weeks Labor day, then the Fest.    In the last two weeks three people I know have moved on to other places.  It is quite sobering, though as for those who have left (really the issue that impacts me most), I expect big things of them.

I admonish myself a little for my selfishness when it comes to departures.  The world needs these leavings more than I need presence.  Perhaps, not entirely true, but the world and righteous cause is more deserving.

Having just finished my wurst, I can hear the cicadas.  The hornets tried their best to end their whir, but the jarflys are too numerous and the neighbors too hostile to permit such a thing.  I feel a little bad for them.  They do look scary, but they really just buzz around one part happy doofus and one part avenging angel to the cicadas.  They basically mate and feed their families, not such an ignoble calling.  Who cares that the equally doofus like jarfly makes up their diet, though there is probably a cicada rights group somewhere that thinks sand hornets should learn to eat oak leaves and pine needles.  Maybe they should, but I can hardly blame them; that wurst was better than a salad.

The end of summer….I will miss it.  I will even miss these loud mouthed cicadas, as I live in a city where I can hear no crickets.  Soon the lake will freeze over and I will be less inclined to smile and left pulling the flaps of a long black coat around my neck giving me an appearance, that were it not for my short stature, must be a little like how the neighbors see the sand hornets.

But I cannot think of these things now.  It is still summer.  There will be a few more hot days and a few more days to see the lake shore and to walk the neighborhood.  The light of summer will fade soon enough and the hornets and cicadas soon be gone, but now there is still the incessant chatter and hunting of flying creatures and still time to walk in those times that do swarm with secret signs.