Feeling sorry for the Minotaur...

because shE (she/he) is alone in their car over there. Waiting for the lights. Head is bowed and occasionally glancing upwards, maybe in time with a song on the radio. Do people still listen to car radios? We did for a while last year, because we had no cassette tapes to listen to but then we got a new car and we can listen to CD's. Although it's tiresome having to bundle CD's back and forth between the car and the weekly shopping.

I've started listening to detuned AM radio. It sounds like 3 or 4 stations, served up together. An ear sandwich whilst I wait in that purgatorial testing booth of shopping centre car parks.

I watch the shoppers pushing trolleys laid down with the same goods in different wrappings. No one seems to notice me but when they do, there's a brief hesitation. A look that asks why and how, I could be sitting there. Just like Buck Turgidson, throwing his arms to the big board. I see them throwing up mental limbs to the shopping plaza, "Why aren't you in there? There's nothing out here! You came here to go in there! What's wrong?" A moment implausible and pleading. I like to hold that glance until they flinch away. Glowering in some towering mental realm or just too beat to care.

Car parks will form the oasis of the 21 century. We will only see mirages beyond here. Hanging gardens, jeweled veils, people in dreams with their heads aflame. Flotation tanks or bubbles minus boy. I can see others tucked down in back seats. They're watching TV screens or else sleeping. Mostly kids. Are they acclimatising to the outside world as I'm withdrawing? No, I'm only waiting and now wishing the Minotaur would get out of their car.

"Minotaur, Minotaur, let down your..." I whisper alone, through radio haze.

"Those lights, they are broken and besides we need to undress. Y'know by now that they were wrong, to lock you away in that labyrinth. Learn to forget, forget forgetting. Wear out the tapestry aside"

I pull up the sails on the car and we pass each other as so often before. No rehearsal parlour.

Next year is your 10000th anniversary.

Minotaur, oh sweet Minotaur. Why the shopping plaza strapped to your back?