These are the texts messages I sent my wife in a recent conversation:

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Me: Just watered my plant.

Me: No.

Me: No, you’re wrong. The plant is doing great.

Me: I’m really going to look after it.

Me: I am going to be a money tree ninja.

Me: One hundred dollar bills are going to be growing on that fucker!

Me: And each bill will blossom into the exact change for the laundry!

Me: Really?

Me: Well, why do they call it a money tree if it doesn’t grow money?

Me: Marketing?

Me: The fuckers.

Me: Fake news is everywhere! It’s getting hard to know how to navigate this world!

Me: Oh, you think a job would help?

Me: You’d be wrong! Just like you are about my plant’s chances for survival!

Me: It’s way better than 15%!

Me: That plant has at least a 50-50 shot. Easily.

Me: I bought a spray bottle for that plant! It’s getting the five star Murray treatment!

Me: That’s what you’re worried about. Ha-ha.

Me: So very clever.

Me: But listen, not everybody needs a job in order to be fulfilled.

Me: Criminals, for instance.

Me: Oh.

Me: Yeah, I guess they do make license plates and stuff.

Me: Okay.

Me: Deer.

Me: Deer don’t have jobs. They don’t even respect the law, man!

Me: Crush the system!

Me: Look, I will eventually get a job.

Me: I will.

Me: I just need to finish the designs for my cryptozoology tarot cards and then I can open up shop and start reading fortunes!!

Me: I was told I could set up a table at Snakes and Lattes.

Me: Well, yes.

Me: I would have to pay a small rental, but that would come out of my fantasy baseball investment portfolio.

Me: Are you serious???

Me: Really???

Me: Fuck!

Me: I can’t believe somebody else already came up with the idea for cryptozoology tarot cards!

Me: Damn it!

Me: I was really looking forward to going on Dragon’s Den, too.

Me: Oh well, back to the drawing board! Fall six times, get up seven, that’s my motto.

Me: “More like fall six million times?”

Me: Good one, Petal.

Me: It’s true, you are a very funny and talented woman who doesn’t drink too much!

Me: No, I don’t know what you’re doing with me either.

Me: Really does seem an uneven match.

Me: Jones?

Me: Yeah, I think he’s around somewhere.

Me: Oh there he is! Standing up on the wobbly chair right by the window and a bunch of dangerous ledges!

Me: He’s fine, having some quality dad time!

Me: Oh you and your elite mothering!

Me: Fine!

Me: He’s down now, playing with a little brown ball on the floor.

Me: Oh.

Me: It’s actually a peeled apple.

Me: Gross.

Me: Listen I’m going to tell you something.

Me: When he hides, I ALWAYS see him.

Me: He’s just not as smart as he thinks he is.

Me: Fine.

Me: Fine. I will perpetuate the peek-a-boo myth if you insist, and throw out the dirt apple, but I am sure as hell not going back to that job at the Box Factory!

Me: Okay, see you at 5:30! xox

I have to say, never in my life have I seen such a dense concentration of hipsters. Children, less than two years old, wore vintage Star Wars t-shirts. Facial hair was artful and complicated, with moustaches waxed to fine, compelling points– as if they were trying to win arguments. Every couple we came across seemed to share a small dog and a colourful sleeve of tattoos that suggested a fondness for roller derby.

The event was actually quite small, existing within a chain link fence that contained no more than 20 tables, and as we walked around and around in circles, it felt very much like being at a hipster Merry-Go-Round. All looking like subtle variations of one another, we trudged around and around, picking up the same tired retro bric-a-brac that we always picked up, and then, unimpressed, putting it back down. Part of this repetitive carnival vibe was likely due to a big silver Airstream Yacht that sat there like the main attraction.

Inside this recreational vehicle was a fortuneteller. She was reading Tarot Cards and there was a small, nervous, two-person lineup outside. A young, Indian man with a meticulously ordered mustache, a scarf wrapped fashionably around his neck and t-shirt depicting a robot with antlers, chewed his fingernails. Behind him was a fabulous black guy dressed sharply in white.  He was wearing a Bowler hat that was tilted so precariously, so precisely, that if he were to have moved an inch or relaxed his posture just a little bit, it would have surely fallen off.

It was difficult to ascertain what truth they hoped might be revealed to them inside the RV, but all of the lives on the grounds there, so studiously documented on Instagram and unfurling before friends in frenzies of vinyl proofs, felt static, as if everybody was now trapped between irony and discovery, fated by some Greek God to walk the same circuit again and again and again.