Description—“Once More to the Lake”
September 18, 2015
Covent Garden As the transformation to dawn reached its conclusion, the charcoal abyss of night had all but diminished, leaving behind only remnants of silvery darkness in the wispy, blue sky as far as the eye could see. Iridescent stars, no bigger than fleas, could still be seen peppered in the distance. Stalls had materialized, side by side, flooding both sides of the street, their brilliantly colored canopies gently billowing in the early morning breeze. Enthusiastic shouts of advertisement crescendoed as the first crowd of the day trickled past the strip of vendors. Buildings dressed in fluorescent paints towered above me, their neon pinks and yellows reflecting vividly in puddles from the last night’s rain. Baskets, rich with fully bloomed petunias, were hung daintily at every lamppost. The wind blew softly, wafting the bold smells of exotic spices down the historic walkway of Neal’s Yard. Clotheslines bearing fabrics of every shape and color were splayed haphazardly from window to window, casting shadows on the dampened cobblestones. Mothers shooed their wide-eyed children past the cornucopia of toys around them as pigeons trotted alongside their civilized acquaintances, imploring for food at the feet of the young and the elderly alike. Street performers stationed themselves sporadically along the streets with hopeful hearts and amplifiers as their only companions. An amalgam of buses, taxis, and cars littered the neighboring streets, filling the marketplace with the incessant purr of distant motors. The sun’s golden rays flooded the London skyline, illuminating the water of the Thames as it danced over the river rocks. Just beyond the strip, a fountain was spurting its crystal stream steadily into the sky, limited only by the gravity that was ceaselessly dragging it back to the serenity of the waiting pool below. The city, like gears of a clock, grudgingly came to life as people of every culture and ethnicity converged in the majestic lanes of Covent Garden.