Sunday, July 03, 2005 Creative
My new housemate and I went to the farmer's market this morning. 4,000 people live here, if you're keeping count. Sike. She's subletting while three of my usual housemates are doing their summer North American tour. They're playing about fifty shows in the US and Mexico. I forget that this is unusal sometimes, because the life of the household is so tour-centric. They're always planning tour, on tour, or just back. They reminisce about the snack food available in other towns, and they have friends all over the country. I feed the cats, who are so smart that they know to come yelling to me for food now that their main people are away. Sometimes the band and friends call me with updates ("These are some baaaad lands!") or ask for updates in turn, usually cat- or utility-bill-related.
Nobody else who was sleeping in the house this morning dared brave 8:00 AM Wake-Up Challenge, so they missed out. We don't usually go that early, but she had to work at 10:00 this week. It turns out that the market is no less crowded two hours earlier, but the crowd has a different flavor. The people who come at 8:00 are grimmer, and more determined. I love that. They look at the vegetables with such suspicion. What's your story, corn, if that is your real name. Are you the best and freshest possible, provably so by the scientific method? They don't bring their dogs, because they didn't come to fuck around. Some of us just work harder in the pre-season. They bring their kids, but only so that they will learn that life hinges on absolute correctness in all things, including choosing hated root vegetables properly and early admission into an Ivy League school. None of these kids are dressed in tiny dragon or fairy princess costumes, like the hippies' kids sometimes are around 11:00.
My new housemate called it market-church, and she's so right. It is my favorite religion. In all the time I tried so hard to be a hobo, I wondered why I wasn't any good at it, and I got kind of down on myself for not being more fulfilled, so I was a little bit miserable a lot of the time. It turns out that what I like are rituals and routines and ridiculously intimate and detailed knowledge of a few key locations.
I like anything that's completely goofy, too.
A few weeks ago, we bought little sunflowers at the market and named them all after the permanent householders. They're about a foot tall, so it's too early to tell who is winning. M. picked the underdog, which turns out to be struggling still. M.-the-sunflower is propped up with a stick. M.-the-human keeps going out and giving it encouragement. The other day he came in and said, "I gave M. such a pep talk. I even gave him some coffee."
M. the sunflower actually looks better. I had been wondering, though, why the coleus planted next to him suddenly looked like it was dying. posted by Frenz | 7/03/2005 10:21:00 AM
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