The chiming of bells emanates over a college campus from a nearby church. The sound reaches a road near the edge of campus where a bald Black man rides on his bicycle with a large white plastic bag hanging from one handlebar. A car can be seen driving down another road on the other side of a parking lot. Bordering the first road is a field with grass that has been cut short and several trees of varying types, including a few tall oaks. Sounds of different insects fade in and out. One errrrrring sound is particularly loud. In the distance, the sun is beginning to set on a large brick building with a curious brown structure on top that resembles the base of a great pyramid.
Insects are quickly chirping. A black Jeep rolls by on a narrow residential road followed by a blue car playing hip hop music. Some insects begin to sing louder before abruptly stopping. More cars roll past. There is a sound of a car starting somewhere nearby. The sun is beginning to set, causing the section of road to be mostly shaded by the trees on the west side. An orange car driven by a young white male with his windows down suddenly appears from around the side of a house. It comes to a pause at the end of a gravel driveway before heading off down the road.
Two large structures envelope a busy parking lot. One is a sports arena with the name “Banterra Center” inscribed in large letters on both a brick and a glass portion of one side of the building. The other, a football stadium marked as “Saluki Stadium” above one entrance. There is a steady stream of fit looking young people walking onto the parking lot and amongst the cars. Several reach vehicles, start up their engines, and drive away. One individual is a Black male with dreadlocks who enters into a white car. The car’s brakes squeal as it backs out of a parking space. Shortly after, the car and the young man are gone.
The effervescent sounds of insects surround a beige two-story house. The engine of a grey car sitting in the driveway starts up. The car backs out and drives away from the house. A white SUV appears from the opposite direction and parks in the driveway of a brick house next door. A middle-aged white man exits the vehicle. He goes around to the passenger side of the car and opens one of the doors before closing it again with a thud. He is then out of sight as he disappears elsewhere onto the property. The next house down is quiet. It has a For Sale sign standing in the front yard. Yet the noises of the neighborhood persist. A sudden, unidentifiable whooping sound from down the road. A distant dog barking. Muffled voices from inside a residence across the street.
Chirps and whistles of insects emit from a thin stretch of coarsely cut grass between a building and a sidewalk. The creatures cannot be seen but their sound is steady. Beyond the shade of the building is a mostly empty parking lot. A lone black car near the front suddenly jumps to life and drives away. A stillness returns. The scene is quiet again aside from the bugs in the grass and the sounds of others on a nearby hill with some trees. Looming above it all is a clocktower that is brightly lit with the sun that is beginning to set. The structure watches silently over the grass, the parking lot, and beyond that, passing cars making their way about town.
Under scattered clouds resting in an early evening sky a Black woman wearing a bright scarf on her head makes her way across the parking lot next to an apartment building. She comes to a dark green car and begins opening the vehicle’s doors, then pops the hood. She pauses to look down upon the inner workings of the car then begins her task. She briefly works on some parts under the hood before returning to the driver’s seat door. There she retrieves a white plastic bag and takes it around to the passenger seat. She takes something else from here and sets it in the seat behind. Then she is back at the passenger seat, leaning into the car. The woman then takes the plastic bag, circles around the car, and proceeds to a dumpster not far away where she calmly tosses the bag out of sight.
A single yellow leaf drifts slowly from the sky to land on a quiet residential road in front of a church. Moments after it has settled, a white car blasting hip hop music rolls past and parks in front of a house next to the church. Across the street two young white men are working outside. One is starting a barbeque grill and the other is inspecting a canoe on the grass. The music from the car across the street shuts off. A couple of other cars drive down the road, a red one pulling into a nearby driveway. One of the men is now sitting under an awning in front of the house. He gets back up and walks to a yellow SUV in the driveway and retrieves a black object from inside. Walking back, he shakes the object at the other man, who has now taken the position of sitting under the awning, before heading into the open garage.
A Black woman wearing a bright red sweater and black sweatpants emerges from a two-story apartment building to load up her car. She throws a bag into the silver Chevy and heads back inside. A Black man with a medical mask hanging off one ear soon appears lugging a mattress. The woman returns and together they lift the mattress on top of the car. They each get in the car to leave. The woman drives the car out of the parking lot, one of her hands on the wheel and the other holding the mattress on top of the vehicle. The parking lot is then empty aside from a few spaced out cars and litter spread out across the pavement. The area is shaded by nearby trees, though the building above is illuminated by the golden rays of the setting sun.
The setting sun sheds its rays upon a section of Main Street where cars are busily moving through an intersection. Across the street from a wide building with massive letters across its top reading “THE BANK OF CARBONDALE” is a small auto shop. The modest collection of garages is beginning to fall into shade as the sun above moves behind a cloud, creating a glowing silhouette in the sky. The sounds of passing cars continue to dominate the surroundings as an older white man in a plaid shirt approaches a red pickup truck labeled Holt’s Tire and Auto on the side. He slowly situates himself in the vehicle then starts the engine. The truck begins to roll forward, then breaks to maneuver in a three-point turn. Now turned around, the man propels the truck forward to exit the parking area of the auto shop.
Two young Black individuals walk close together, but not quite side by side, up a long sidewalk leading to three high-rise dormitories. The woman on the left walks in a fairly straight line, while the man on the right drifts back and forth. The man playfully lifts his hands into the air for a moment, as if reaching for a bar or shooting a basketball. He straightens out briefly as the woman hands him something to put in his backpack. They walk past a towering maple tree with lopsided branches that are beginning to burst around the edges with orange leaves. As the two pass out of sight, two young men, one tall and white and the other short and Black, head down the pathway in the opposite direction. They walk close together, conversing casually as they go.
A gray sky hangs above the view through three glass doors at the end of a corridor. Below it are trees, a tan brick building with a red roof, and people and cars calmly making their way to and fro. The occasional sounds of footsteps and opening and closing of doors echoes throughout the corridor. Now, a bald white man wearing a black face mask and a black polo enters the building from a door down the hall and turns a corner. As the hall empties again the ambient sound of rushing air through ventilation channels returns to the fore. Near the entryway close by is a door marked “Custodial Office,” almost unnoticeable to the casual passerby. Just outside it, a single red plastic chair sits silently, unoccupied and forgotten.
Red lights stream quickly by on the road in front of a bank. A light green car pulls into a parking space in front of the building. A light-skinned Black woman wearing a green hoodie and colorfully patterned capri pants exits from the driver’s side door with her phone to her ear. She paces around the vicinity of the car while she speaks into the device. The car continues to run with its lights on and a man sits waiting in the passenger seat. Cars rush by on an adjacent road behind the bank. Still more crawl around in the parking lot of the bank and at a large grocery store next door. On an island dividing the roads in front and behind the bank a small American flag whips back and forth in the cool wind.
A collage of yellow, red, orange, and green leaves bursts from the trees standing between a road and a lake. Along the road, a blond man wearing a long sleeve t-shirt and tights sprints by. Moments later, a car passes. The man appears again in the distance turning onto a road heading away from the lake, still in full sprint. Cars continue to pass, their headlights glowing softly against the dim surroundings. In between the sounds of the vehicles, the gentle noise emerges of birds chirping and unknown objects falling to the grass.
A man wearing a backpack strides down a sidewalk past a patch of tall trees. He reaches a large building made up of cube-like structures and passes in front of it. He continues on up the path past more buildings and into the distance. The landscape on which he moves is a college campus in early twilight, dotted with light fixtures illuminating the pathways and parking lots. With the man out of sight, there is an emptiness to the vicinity, challenged only by the nearby sound of skateboards thumping against concrete. Then, like clockwork, a few more people appear meandering about the interlocking pathways, isolated in their own worlds yet connected in the physical one.
Cars move quickly past, their white lights shining against a darkening blue sky. A large neon sign stands above the road with the words “Eastgate Center” and an insignia with the letters “Eg” glowing in red. The word “Shopping” is blacked out on the sign, not lit up like the rest. A slight cool breeze passes through. Further down the road, a pixelated sign glows in front of a chiropractor clinic in a small building. One at a time, the words flash: “care,” “massage,” “therapy,” “available,” “walk in MWF,” “romans 12:10.”
Lights shine down on a grocery store parking lot. Cars zip by on an adjacent road. A shopping cart sits quietly by itself on the edge of the lot. Insects emit a soft twirring sound somewhere across the road. A small white bus emerges from in front of the store and turns towards the entrance of the lot, passing out of sight as it becomes obscured by the slightly curved surface of the asphalt. A dark figure moves in the shadows on the sidewalk across the street.
Cars move up a long residential road, their headlights cutting through the darkness. The moon shines through a glaze of clouds above, but most of the light at this particular spot comes from a close by street light. One side of the road is mostly lined by trees, while a row of houses stretches along the other side. In front of one single-story house an American flag flows gently in the breeze, illuminated by a light shining from the ground. A squeaking noise from some animal starts and stops. From somewhere else comes the sound of hammering. The next house up the road has broad front-facing windows, through which the living quarters of its residents are on prominent display, lit up by the lights inside. A bright lamp sits front and center in one window, projecting the warmth of the lives lived within the residence towards the outside world.
Clouds obscure the dying light on a quiet road. The houses are shrouded in darkness and even the trees form dark silhouettes against the sky. Only a few scattered streetlights puncture the darkness, along with the soft glow of windows on some of the homes. All is still, yet there is palpable activity in the distance. The sounds of cars moving along streets comes from further in town. A siren blazes from an unknown location. A train rumbles through the center of town. The city’s outsize presence mutes the more immediate surroundings. But then, a car seems to be approaching, just around the bend. Yet it never appears.
Cars stopped briefly at a stoplight lurch forward. The vehicles following them move quickly through the now green light. The light turns yellow, then flashes to red. Cars slow to a stop and two people cross the intersection. A runner with a bright orange cap crosses on the other side then moves diagonally across the road. The cycle of humans in transit continues. The light is green, then red again and cars are stopped. Green. A large truck with a wood chipper in tow passes through the light, along with more cars. There is a lull in traffic as the light turns red again. More cars appear in time to breeze through the intersection at the cue of the green light. A cyclist with a medical mask on and a light glowing from the front of their bike approaches the intersection and crosses as the light turns red once more.
Within an apartment building with large glass windows in front, the figure of a heavyset Black woman appears walking through a commons area. She is obscured by a pillar as she takes a seat. There is no one else in sight and chairs are set upside down upon the surrounding tables. A car pulls up across the road and backs into a side street. It approaches and comes to rest outside of a small yellow box of an apartment building. A middle-aged Black woman with a red sweater exits the driver’s seat. She turns and calls the name of someone who is sitting in the car to get their attention. Then she continues, “Get that off my seat. Now get out. That’s what you get.” One of the doors to the backseat opens to reveal a Black boy in his teens. A younger Black woman gets out from the other side of the car and she and the boy move towards the front of the building. The boy calls back towards the car excitedly “GET IT MA, RIGHT NOW, BEFORE I…” The family continues to exchange words as the older Black woman opens the door to the back seat. She grabs a small green box, closes the door and joins the others as they head into their modest home.
Cars drive lazily up to an intersection and pass through, their headlights illuminating the path ahead of them. A melodic chime emanates from a clocktower obscured behind some trees. Then the striking of a bell, “BONG...BONG...BONG...BONG...BONG.” At the corner of the intersection a young Black man runs along the side of an apartment building and enters through a door into a brightly lit room. On the other side of the road an Asian woman with a small pack on her back jogs up the sidewalk. She stops and walks as she approaches the stop sign then jogs across the street. Upon reaching the other side she slows again to a walk. From somewhere else comes the sound of bells bursting into another song.
A car rolls down a road coming from a dimly lit area with white apartment buildings. It makes a turn at a stop sign and heads towards a busier road. Beyond this, lights illuminate an empty parking lot. In the distance looms the shadowy tower of a power plant. From somewhere close to the vicinity of the white apartment buildings comes the grating sound of something being sawed. The sound is low but hangs like a chill over the air. Another car passes by, this time coming from the busy road and moving towards the apartments. The sawing ceases. Another car passes. A couple of dark figures appear walking near the apartments. The sawing resumes abruptly. The light of the moon is obscured by clouds.
An umbrella sits in the dirt and grass next to a sidewalk opened and turned upside down. It is a dark shade of blue with a large white figure in the center containing a few small orange shapes on the edges, two of which resemble the webbed feet of a duck. Enveloping the space around the umbrella are sounds of passing cars. The bells in a nearby church are also chiming a melodic tune. Suddenly a large truck carrying a construction digger machine approaches an intersection down the road and blasts a loud horn. In spite of all this, the umbrella sitting in the dirt is unmoved. Darkness is setting in around it, but its stoic figure stands out against the grass and twigs. More cars pass by, yet nobody claims it and it continues to sit.
An old white woman walks to a house from her car in the driveway. Above her, an exciting scene is playing out. Birds chirp quickly as they fly to and from trees. One sits briefly atop a powerline. It dives suddenly to hover for a moment in front of the glowing bulb of a streetlight, then flies back to the powerline. Reconsidering, it hops down to a lower powerline, but then zips quickly away. More birds fly together in a group high overhead. Others flit in and out of sight around the quiet grouping of houses in the vicinity, all against a backdrop of a deep blue sky melding into a pink and purple horizon. Close to the ground, a crimson-colored bird darts by.
A squirrel jumps suddenly to the ground from the arm of a tree. The animal has disappeared but birds can be heard chirping somewhere in the surrounding woods. On the edge of the trees, a yellow sign displays the message “WARNING this path is not recommended for use after dark. Please use the Brightway Path after dark.” A concrete and stone path extends beyond the sign and into the dimly lit woods. In the distance a grey building peeks over the top of the trees. A yellow light peers through the branches from somewhere within or beyond the woods. In the opposite direction is a small building with a large bay window revealing a brightly lit room. A young man with a maroon polo shirt and a black face mask opens a glass door next to the window. Then, after a moment, he closes the door and returns to the light.
A white man with red pants and a grey beanie walks a small dog down a sidewalk. Patches of snow cover the front lawns of houses around them. A man parks a car by an intersection and crosses the street to enter a white home. From somewhere in the distance comes the faint sound of a car alarm going off, though it soon ceases. Cars roll by sporadically among the houses. Suddenly the taillights of the car near the intersection flash, and flash a few more times. The muffled sound of a woman coughing comes from within the white house. A simple red “For Rent” sign stands in the ground outside the home.
Below a mesh of telephone wires and tree branches and under a dull grey sky, a side street connects two busy one-way roads. Wind chimes sing a gentle song hanging in front of one grey house where a bright purple light shines from a room at the front. Across the street and a little further down, a window at the front of another house reveals a brightly lit bedroom with an assortment of scattered belongings. The sidewalk dips as the street continues on down a small slope. Towards the bottom stands a small house with a large wooden ramp featuring a handicapped parking sign on the front leading up to the front door. A sign in the front lawn says “BE A BLESSING” with several other inspirational phrases below it. Towards the end of the street a few large garbage bins line up along the sidewalk.
Snow blankets everything around. It continues to add up, coming down in little flakes and blowing sideways. Cars drive slowly over the snow covered roads. Some turn cautiously as they round the corner at an intersection. The only other sign of life is some birds flying far overhead. A snowplow approaching the intersection stops briefly then plows through a red light. While the roads are just clear enough for vehicles to traverse them, everywhere else is another matter. On the corner of the intersection, the steps of a church are utterly buried in snow. The snowplow returns from the opposite direction. This time it stops at the streetlight and the driver reaches out of the door to clear the windshield with his hand. He then continues, moving on past the sign on the corner for the hospital, snow falling into place behind him as he goes.
An old man with a blue sweater, black cap, and black facemask walks along a path on the edge of a lake. Making his way around, he crosses a wooden footbridge and disappears beyond some trees. Just offshore, abandoned paddle boats float in a covered dock. One lone paddle boat floats lazily on the water near the middle of the lake. Two young men donning medical masks converse as they make their way down the path along the shore, passing the docks and a collection of upturned canoes. Another man jogs down the path and tactfully passes the two walkers. The men pause their conversation as the stranger passes. The quiet scene by the edge of the lake carries on as the sun sets behind the trees further down the path.
Two Black men with maroon shirts and facemasks walk through a courtyard in between two buildings and enter a door. One of the men stands just inside for several moments fiddling with the door. Both men walk out, speaking to each other as they go. “I’d say if you text them, the keys, might be one in there,” one of them comments. “Alright,” the other replies. The men head off in separate directions. One goes to a door further down, opens and closes it, then walks away from the door to stand for a minute facing away from the building. The sound of bells chiming a song from a church nearby moves through the courtyard. The man walks off, leaving the space empty. Some moments pass as leaves blow gently around on the ground of the courtyard. Above, golden rays of sun caress the tops of the two buildings as the evening sets in. Inside one of the buildings, one of the men passes by behind the glass of the doorways as he moves about his business.
From within the dark recesses below a manhole comes the sound of water gently dripping and flowing. Puddles of water fill small depressions in the pavement around the manhole. The hole sits in the center of a parking lot that is nearly empty aside from several white and red vehicles on one edge. From somewhere beyond the parking lot birds are chirping. Cars are also driving steadily by on the road in front of the lot. A bus lurches through a stop sign and a traffic light, making a blowing noise as it accelerates forward. Overhead are overcast skies and a slight breeze is evident from the whipping back and forth of some marking flags in a nearby patch of grass. The manhole sits amongst its surroundings, indistinct from any other manhole, aside from the marking of a flattened, blue piece of gum on the pavement beside it.
With a bounce in her step, a middle-aged white woman in a bright red sweater with a bag slung over her back makes her way down the sidewalk. Her eye catches something on the ground that should not be there, and she stops suddenly to pick up a plastic water bottle. She continues on, swinging the bottle as she goes, until she reaches a recycling receptacle conveniently located at the intersection she has to cross the road at. Having deposited the bottle, she begins to jaunt slantways across the busy intersection, disregarding the traffic. Her naive confidence catches up with her, as she breaks into a jog twice to avoid vehicles barreling by. Safely on the other side, she soon comes across a couple other undesirable items polluting the ground and snatches them up. Unphased, the woman carries on down the sidewalk, a bright red speck moving up and down into the distance.
Houses line both sides of a side street that breaks off from a busy one-way road. A tire swing hangs from a tree in a back yard near the beginning of the street. Slowly the street begins to slope up. In front of a green house a collection of yellow daffodils have come into flower. Across the street, purple flowers dot the lawn of a brown house. Birds chirp from somewhere out of sight. Passing by another side street, an older man can be seen chasing after a young child. Disrupting this view, a white boy with blond hair whips by on a bike, blasting hip hop music. Continuing on, more flowers are attempting to burst forth on the side of the road. Purple buds push into existence on a tree in front of one wooden tiled house. Finally the road comes upon a blue and white geodesic dome house on the corner of another intersecting street. Without so much as a glance, two men walk across the intersection, one with a hood draped over his head.
An old Black man walks along a sidewalk talking on a phone. “Really at Schnucks right now, walking back right now,” he says, then after a pause, “Alright, I’ll be right back.” Lights flicker from the wall of the large red stone building the man is walking by. He passes by the entrance to a parking lot and moves on towards a stoplight where passing cars are slowing to a stop. On the other side of the road a young Black man is waiting. When an opening in the traffic appears, he crosses the street and enters the parking lot in front of the building. He has headphones in and is lost in whatever he is listening to. The young man stops suddenly in his tracks and pulls his phone from his pocket, then continues to walk around the corner of the building. At the end of the parking lot, fumes are emitting from a Burger King building. A large white RV is parked outside. A man with a yellow vest appears around the corner of the red brick building. He grabs an empty shopping cart sitting in the parking lot and leads it away.
The lone figure of a heavyset woman stands in a parking lot that is mostly empty save for a few cars along the edges. She stands motionless and silent for several moments with a shadow cast over her from the trees on the edge of the pavement. Finally, a white bus approaches and stops. The woman gets on the bus and it drives away. Shortly thereafter, a black car rolls up, breaks, and pulls into a parking space. A man exits from the passenger side door. He pauses to exchange some words with someone in the car, then walks towards a brick building. The car reverses and drives away in the way it came. The parking lot returns to stillness and quiet, except for some birds cawing in the nearby trees.
Rain is spurting down from sporadic grey clouds onto a road lined with houses and a large brick building. A soft sprinkling sound emanates from the sidewalk as water hits the surface. Several cars and a white bus shuffle by through the mist. A breeze shifts the rain slightly towards the brick building. The rain picks up a smidge then slows to almost a stop only a few seconds later. Then, like a breath, it picks up again, pouring down as hard as ever. A siren somewhere in the distance somehow finds its way through the sound of droplets hitting the ground. On the black asphalt of an entryway to the brick building these drops dance as they ricochet back into the air.
A young Black woman wearing a head wrap walks along the sidewalk of a busy one-way street. AirPods in her ears, she preoccupies herself by taking bites from the food she has using both hands as she walks. She passes by a two-story white house where two young men are perched on the roof of the first story section extending in front of the house. The heavier-set of the two, wearing a red t-shirt, sits against the wall while the other man, wearing a long sleeve white t-shirt, paces around somewhat erratically as they converse. Across the street, a car pulls up alongside the road and a young white man with brown hair exits the vehicle. Simultaneously, another young man crosses the road towards the car and offers a greeting.
