A Haunting Refrain

I realize there's little point in imparting this thought, and that it breaks zero emotional or intellectual ground, but, as everyone's favorite pixel obdurate, I'm plowing ahead anyway. I love going into my office early Sunday mornings. I get up while the girls, and seemingly most of the world, happily slumbers. On the way in I've been passing the same ramshackle Sherman Williams store, long boarded up, for years. Recently some enterprising type bought the place and instead of a tear-down turned it into a retro coffee spot. No big deal - new sign, fresh paint, bright awning. It's basically the Airstream Camper version of your local spot. There are tables outside and every time I come flying around that corner (it's at the end of a long straightaway with no parking or sidewalks, the main reason, aside from toxic Sherman Williams primer fumes, that it's been empty for so long) I see people enjoying an early latte. Here's the problem (you already know the problem): There are ten fresh, white tables. Nine are occupied. Eight by young couples. The couples are not cracking wise about last night's The Good Wife, or holding forth on phallic imagery in Vonnegut, or relaying work details that the other (...and then, the new guy? He just marches into the meeting and...") gamely pretends to care about. Or even mid-argument, one more accusation and half a bear claw away from breaking the lease. Nope. They're both staring at their phones. Together. Mutually. Proximally. Necks bent. Thumbs primed. Wheel-spinning tandem bikes of absorption. Every time. Coffee wafts between and pigeons peck around, but as medium was once message, environment is now afterthought. Sure, maybe they're just bored or knocking out emails or something important really does have to be handled right then. I get it. No judgment. Technology is inexorable and those who rail against it are either Ted Kaczynski, insufferably retrograde, or insufferable Ted Kaczynski. But here's my (one, small) point: every time I come zooming around that corner it's a snapshot that reminds me, in a jarringly visceral way, of Edward Hopper's diner. The painterly isolation. A sallow, forlorn light. Two people, two phones, an emptiness that renders attempts to describe the existential existentially moot. Or hey, maybe it's just me. But there is, if nothing else, a fleeting nose swab of sadness. And then I downshift through the final string of yellow lights and careen sideways into my parking spot, forgetting all about it. But this thing, this feeling, exists. No cranking the tunes and pretending it away. For that one second the flash recoils, BANG, and an image is exposed, already submerged in the chemistry bath of my mind, ready for a mixture of red light and silver halide to bring it forth once again, every time.