June 21st at the River Market
It’s the first day of summer, warm,
about 90 degrees, but nice in the shade of the River Market awnings. The birds
are having a lovely time singing and occasionally foraging for nesting
materials from their perches in the support beams. They are a natural backdrop
to the oddly concrete venue of the farmer’s market. Maybe once upon, people
walked or rode their horses or drove their wagons to the farmer’s market to
sell what they had, buy what they couldn’t raise and talk with their
neighboring farmers. Now we drive our SUVs and luxury sedans across town so we
can experience the same things our great-grandpas and grandmas took for
granted.
Leaning low over a bin of loose
spices, I inhale the densely packed granules of garam masla and admire the
tight coils of cinnamon stick. Words are not an adequate expression of the
information my nose gives me. Could it really be comfort, love, excitement,
mystery? Yes and more and more until my nose shorts out and my brain says,
“Move on, remember, move on.”
There aren’t many people here of a
Friday afternoon. After all, it’s just turned summer and most vacations are
still a dim red “x” on the calendar—longed for but not close enough to be real
yet. Older couples, college students, some stay-at-home-moms with their kids.
And vendors. They watch the shoppers with that finely tuned sense that
shopkeepers all seem to possess. That person can be trusted, but THAT person, I
need to watch her. Some of them try to advertise their wares and some just
confirm what you already know from reading the signs. “Yes, the grapes are 1.99
a pound. No there aren’t any purple ones, just green.”
There is an expectation here—fresh,
farm grown produce sold at very little profit to the farmer. When I look at the
lemons, I wonder where the lemon tree is, here in Kansas, that produced such
lovely little yellow fruit? It seems strange to offer grocery story produce
here when you can find it in any industrialized cinder-block building flooded
with fluorescent lights and drowning in musak. Oh, that’s why.
The birds are getting braver now,
coming down near my table to peck at crumbs left from beignets, or cinnamon
rolls or whatever it is they are selling at the store with the Sanskrit. I
cannot read it but I feel as if I should be able to. Above the flowing script,
in small letters, it says helpfully “Middle Eastern Cuisine.”
A couple about 10 years older than
me holds hands as they put their purchases in their car. They stand apart from
each other so that their hands are the only point of connection between them.
With packages stowed, they walk away, the man with his hand placed gently on
the woman’s back as if guiding her, again just the one point of tenuous
connection. You can tell they are a couple because they seem to exist
simultaneously apart and together. I wonder how my husband and I look to other
people? Is it possible to tell how two people feel about each other looking at
them from outside their relationship? Things always look different from the
outside.
The arrival of a UPS truck stops
the birds for a second. Or maybe I can’t hear them because the noise of the
truck engine drowns them out. As soon as he shuts off the engines, they are
there again, their lives uninterrupted by the intrusion of something they cannot
possibly understand. They have no schedule, unlike the UPS man, their only
imperative is to follow their natural instincts; to fly, to perch, to eat, to
mate, to nest. If interrupted in their course, they simply resume. They are not
and cannot be bothered.
Tomorrow, none of the cars will be
in this central area—it will be filled with booths and people and things grown
or made. But today it is a strange mixture of organic and inorganic, natural
and man-made. Yet the music made by people is no less natural than that made by
the birds still singing in the awnings. They, like us, are communicating in the
only way they know—by being present in the moment, by making those small
connections, by singing out what we feel compelled to sing out. How seldom it is that we truly employ our
five senses to be present in the world. What could be gained if we could stop
our self-manufactured busy-ness and just listen, look, smell, taste, feel? This
is my lesson to myself today—be like the birds. Follow your own biological,
natural imperative. And don’t forget to sing.
