Time to sell
Why don’t these southern French stall-keepers seem gloomy?
Surely they struggle for a living like everyone else. We know they take great pride in the trials of ‘amour’. Surely they understand what it is to wake up in a sweat, feverish from the heartache of dreams, their bodies captured by the terrifying revelations of desire tilting towards death. Surely they feel pinned to their beds, eyes swirling, with no recourse but the clutching of sheets and the locking of breath.
This is not a mood for shop-keeping. Still the sun rises early here, and many depend on the daily selling. There are trucks to be loaded and awnings to be stretched; fryers to be lit and space to be filled. There are fish to be wrapped and money to be folded – flocks of bills and mountains of coins to be palmed and creased and rubbed and lost. This is serious business which deserves a serious face. And if our sleep’s dominion must be abandoned, then surely we must leave it with a scowl and a shudder, with no hope for ourselves, no faith in transaction, no trust in the dawn.
But the French merchants seem not to understand this. How else to explain lively eyes and rosy cheeks; the choir song of bonjour and au revoir, weaving its descant down each narrow street; the civil humilities of a thousand merci beaucoups, the blithe optimism of a swarm of à bientôts.
Where are the hooded eyes? The postures of avoidance? The slouch of decline and the wheeze of hopelessness? Don’t these people know to spit out the monosyllabic barbs of big-city selling? Don’t they know to despise their lot, and defend their meagreness?
Don’t they know we’re all doomed?
This politeness disarms me: this grace, this lightness. The day is long but the hours fly by – the night and its terrors forgotten in a stream of greetings and departures. There is time for a chat, for a laugh, a renunciation of injustice, for a kiss on the cheek.
Maybe this is all we can do, after all.
– Martin Julien
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Comment
- nice. makes me think of the mercato Romano down my street, open by the ungodly hour of 7: swarming and teeming with sellers and wares, smiles and buon giornos, cheeses hanging like chandeliers over scrubbed-and-glowing good-humoredness, artichokes mountaining along the length of the street, and everyone happy to be there.
if this is all we can do, it is indeed a lot.
— shiraz Nov 4, 11:04am # - Perhaps it is their ability to live in the moment, endulging in and celebrating the beauty and pleasure of life’s simple things. Appreciating the grass on their own side of the fence instead of feeding envy and clamouring for all that (which is, for sure, not “all that”) on the other side. A concept also illustrated by this little story.
Two Wolves
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between 2 “wolves” inside us all.
One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy,sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
— sue Nov 6, 12:08am # - I have many conversations with friends here in perfect San Francisco about how our misery is the result of the time we have on our hands to think about it all way to much. It’s a crooked luxury to have the time and resources to worry and fret about our human condition when we as humans evolved to survive real struggles for survival. I have never struggled for survival. Instead, I battle internal demons, anxieties, and the illusions of “success”.
Or maybe they can relax because they live in France and have nationalized health care.
Then again, if they subsist on a diet that includes the incredible fruit and wine of your chosen homeland, that could account for a big heap of happiness.
Lovely post, Gail. Thank you.
— Jeff Nov 7, 11:59pm #
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