Summer in the City

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Although all is slowing down a bit, there is still life in the city. And moments of poetic charm involving food.

A few days ago I looked out my window and saw a group of people getting ready to work in front of the house across the street. One man was handing out gloves – so it was obviously going to be dirty. Then they started carrying things out of a basement in that house.

After a while, one of the ladies stopped carrying things out and started placing something on top of the chairs and the old cabinet they had been putting aside. Probably to keep those, while the other items were clearly on their way to the recycling place down west.

But she kept arranging things. And then I realized what she was doing. She had set out a number of plates with sandwiches on them, a small convention of thermos bottles, and – of course – cake. Half an hour later, everyone was standing amidst the picturesque chaos of discarded things, eating and talking. Working together and sharing a meal.

A little later I went downtown to get some groceries and came across another colorful scene. A young musician had set up a speaker with her cell phone and an electric violin attached to it. And as I walked through the rows of fruits and vegetables, next to merchants and customers or just people who stopped to talk at the farmers’ market, ‘Caruso’ transformed the whole place into a concert hall with an open blue sky. And the blouses and skirts took the invitation to dance from the jackets vis a vis, as a famous Viennese waltz transformed the light breeze around us into glorious swirls of music.

Summer in the city.

… everyone was standing amidst the picturesque chaos of discarded things, eating and talking. Working together and sharing a meal.

Side Notes:

  • I love farmers’ markets. They are amongst my favorite places in the city, and so I’m going to create a special category about them a little further down the Parsley-Lane as well.
  • The opera song ‘Caruso’ was written by the Italian musician and singer Lucio Dalla in the 80’s of the last century. It was dedicated to Enrico Caruso and made famous by the magnificent tenor Luciano Pavarotti, whose interpretation of the song was a deeply felt tribute to his mentor.