Overwhelmed with absurdity, beautiful clutter, and vegetables

 Just a quick blog – – I’m about to cook up ripe tomatoes, green beans, zucchini, and green peppers: farm produce overflow donated to the food shelf – – I need to cook them now so they don’t go bad.

And I’m making Niçoise salad for my friendKG’s birthday-eve dinner here in the yard tonight—I had to go to the store to buy baby red potatoes and capers and lemon, otherwise I had all the nice things.

I went to the expensive grocery store that has really nice vegetables – – and I bought a cantaloupe and three big peaches too. 

As I was waiting at the bus stop to go home, a lovely and disheveled (homeless?) young man came up and asked me the time, tapping his wrist – – I was a little surprised that young person would still make that gesture. Has it become universal and timeless?

I told him the time, and then he laid down against the wall with his bags of possession and appeared to fall asleep. As the bus was coming though, I saw he stirred and looked around, so I took a peach from my bag and went over to him…

“Would you like a peach?”

He looked a little startled.

 “Yes.” 

And then he laughed a funny little laugh, which I heard as placing our interaction in The Realm of the Absurd.

It was like a frame around us, like a movie still: old woman at bus stop gives a peach to young man on ground.

“Thank you,” he said.

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Here is a doll rescued from death on a raft on the open sea. She was naked, so was given a new dress.

“I had a brush with death,” she says proudly.

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And here, below, are some of the grab-bags I’ve been assembling from that certain art-scavenger donor’s decluttering… These are a great joy to me, but sadly the donor has been brung so low with depression, she has taken a break from her decluttering project. I have offered her help. She said she’s too fragile now but appreciates the offer.

“I will stand by”, I said.