To Market

I left the flat today to find food for the week. In my home village, there was an indoor market. Lines of items for everyone: meats. fish. eggs. 

In the city, every corner has a shop master selling what all shop masters 

sell – expensive items of poor quality to those that venture no further than they must. One must go further to find a good price. To find fresh meats, a person may find a meat market. Fish? A separate market in a separate area of the city early in the morning. A bean? A stand that sells them. Loaf bread, in a still different bizarre.

The citizens move from shop to shop with aluminum carts; personal wheeled-baskets, and it is glorious to watch them as they move along the street. Food, for these people, is a destination three stations away. The meal: a ritual, a processional along the main traffic ways of the metropolitan neighborhoods. 

Eating is a deliberate act. Finding the meal is equally deliberate.

Where once we carried items on our shoulders, our backs, we now push them around like a showcase of personal delights. The flavor of survival in the city is in our baskets. And yet, we are left quite vulnerable and exposed without our own transportation. Where does one direct the eyes with so many neighbors close – on the streets, on the trains, in shops? Our baskets become the object of our eyes without cars to hide them in. Our imaginations create plots involving our neighbors to keep us entertained, where once we ate together.