Harmony Parking Lot. Brattleboro, Vermont.

Brattleboro, Vermont.

A town where the word freak no longer exists.  Not much here ever seems odd.  Somehow things seem acceptable here.  No matter what.

(Cue music:  Radiohead.  Weird Fishes.)

A truly Neptunian depot.

There is a central parking lot, named Harmony Lot, where everything, since I first saw it back in 1968, has actually in been in harmony with zen-like acceptance to what chooses to roll through this particular crossroad.

I get out of my Boston car rental and hear random notes of music floating around me. I am jet lagged. 

As far as I can see from this block-sized parking lot, there are only coffee shops and art galleries. And suggestions of music.

And I say to my kid Why do I keep hearing odd music? She says because, there's wind chimes.  Wind chimes in a parking lot? I look up. Indeed, there are wind chimes. Huge ones. 

Duct taped way up in a tree in the middle of the parking lot someone has duct-taped a set of enormous low-toned wind chimes. Of course. 

Then an apparent hippie with a black turban wrapped around his head bikes by, shirtless on a rusty bike with great abs. 

He is carrying a power drill. No, he's not a hippie. He's Sikh. 

This is Brattleboro. 

I walk to the corner of the parking lot (I haven't gone 20 feet yet.) and step over the granite curb and look up to see a young man holding a ciggarette with a wobbly gait lurch toward me, but in a friendly sort-of way. In his left hand a cigarette, in his right a tiny tortoiseshell cat with a big dog leash wrapped around it's neck twice binding it to the man's left arm.  On closer inspection I see it is not there by choice, it is lashed there.

I say, You have a kitten. On a leash. 

He corrects me. No it's not a kitten. It's a service Tea Cup cat. It warns me about my seizures. I get them.

Oh,I say. Because, what else does one say?

I look down. He has a 10 inch knife strapped to his belt in a leather sheath. 

Yes, he cheerfully continued, It's a tea cup service cat and this is as big as it gets.

He waves a tiny, bored, miserable kitten-sized cat at me in a circular motion, as if to demonstrate the cat will be his no matter what.  By "what" I mean being tossed around wildly for no good reason other than to prove docile servitude while being strapped to a lurching human.

The Service, blind, Tea Cup cat is also strapped to his arm by a leach clearly intended for a different breed and size of mammal.  The leather coils of leather strands engulf this tired tiny creature.  

The cat bobs at the end of his arm like an elderly person strapped into a ride perpetually turned full blast at the Orange County Fair. 

I notice the service "cat" is winking blandly at me. A lot.  With one eye.

He continues. 

Yes, most tea cup cats are born no bigger than a matchbox,  this one is as big as it will ever get. Because they are so small very few survive. This one survived but is blind in one eye. 

We stare at the tiny cat.  Upon closer inspection can see tne tiny cat's tiny eye is indeed, quite welded shut.

It'll have lung cancer, too. I think, but keep it to myself. 

Juliet is staring at this exchange with wordless wonder. 

I go on. Well, thank you very much for sharing this with me. I never had any idea this... kind of thing...exists.

He cheerfully bid me farewell, sucked on his cigarette and lurched on. 

Another person enlighted, I could hear him think. 

We went on our way, too. As if this kind of exchange happens every day. As if in a dream. 

Brattleboro's Harmony Parking Lot.

A Neptunian common ground.