Happy Wednesday dear readers, all half-dozen of you!

I compose this small missive from the lobby of the Richmond Ballet building in beautiful downtown Richmond.  As has become habit in the last month or so, I’ve taken the mid-week taxi shift to haul my firstborn child to her ballet class; since it takes a good twenty-to-thirty minutes to get here, it makes sense to simply hang out for her hour-long session.  Thankfully, the lobby is spacious, has comfy couches, and most importantly, freely accessable (well, freely accessible if you have the password) wireless internet.  I drag my laptop along, and take an hour to read email, administer this here little web site, and surf the net.  It’s quiet, it’s reasonably peaceful, and most importantly, it saves Colleen having to pack Catherine up into her car seat, which tends to annoy the infant most of the time.

So, I’m sitting here on the end of the squishy red couch, surrounded by similarly occupied parents sinking into similarly squishy crimson seating, flipping through paperbacks, newspapers or magazines, or in one guy’s case, taking a nap.  There are a couple of siblings and/or ballet students not in class doing homework or gossiping about something that I can’t, or don’t really care to make out.

The room itself, in contrast to the squishy furniture, is all raw concrete, exposed ductwork, sharp angles, and brushed aluminum.  I believe this building, like a lot of the buildings in this part of the city, used to serve some industrial purpose.  Today, it’s kind of work of not-quite modern art; it’s sterile and spare, but it’s actually quite attractive; both complimenting, and sitting in stark opposition to, the organic shapes and precise movement of ballet.

I can look eastward out the big glass wall/window, past the railing suggesting a ballet bar, past the reversed lettering identifying the structure, onto the world outside; it’s busy, the tail end of the afternoon rush of state employees and financial professionals stop-and-going up Canal street toward the downtown expressway and its promise of passage to suburbia.

Across the street is a full to bursting parking lot; beyond that, the local Red Cross office and a couple of little cafes; not that I can see much of them right now; with dusk settling earlier these days, I lose a bit of visibility to reflections of the indoor flourescent tubes; however, the pinkish reflection of the last bit of today’s sunset is prominent and often brilliant in the window panes across the way, and the tops of some of the taller university buildings barely visible, peeking out beyond….

…thank you for sharing my little exercise in creative writing.