Today, navigating through a blanket of fog, I went to the market to buy oranges and came home with 40 carciofi. They were lying on a hessian sack on the ground, freshly dug, tied into four neat bundles. I know the elderly man who was standing beside them. He doesn't have a stall, a table or a chair, more a patch of space to park his little van. I dug them yesterday, he said, please take them all. And without a second thought I did. It was the look of them up-rooted, their silver green beautiful leaves, them needing to be returned to the earth, his growing and digging and bundling of them and bringing them to market in the sack through the fog. He told me exactly what to do; trim them, stamp them in well. When will I have artichokes? I asked. Perhaps May, because it's late. Next May you will, he smiled.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
a sack of carciofi
Today, navigating through a blanket of fog, I went to the market to buy oranges and came home with 40 carciofi. They were lying on a hessian sack on the ground, freshly dug, tied into four neat bundles. I know the elderly man who was standing beside them. He doesn't have a stall, a table or a chair, more a patch of space to park his little van. I dug them yesterday, he said, please take them all. And without a second thought I did. It was the look of them up-rooted, their silver green beautiful leaves, them needing to be returned to the earth, his growing and digging and bundling of them and bringing them to market in the sack through the fog. He told me exactly what to do; trim them, stamp them in well. When will I have artichokes? I asked. Perhaps May, because it's late. Next May you will, he smiled.
