La Macchina Fotografica

The human race is more connected than ever. Go to a bar on a Friday night and everyone is texting everyone else. The antennae are up. You can contact more people on the planet than ever before. That’s not all. Soon, aliens from distant stars will be texting hot girls in bars. Single men of Planet Earth won’t stand a chance. Already, the girls text one another across town when the guys start to bore them, about five minutes into most conversations. Oddly, the guys don’t seem to mind. Maybe that’s the problem.

Texting, blogging, surfing, and googling. There are more people and more information at our fingertips than we can handle. I connect with my Facebook friends more than I actually talk to people—you know, face them in real life and listen to their stories, their hopes, wishes, and desires. I’m not complaining. I think the world is ever expanding, constantly getting better. But, sometimes, we need real human contact.

The market is our only hope. That’s why I had to go back to the farmer’s market last week. I couldn’t stand it anymore. Going to market is one of my few chances these days to connect to real people. And if Safeway were the only place for me to go, well, I’d rather shop online. The life of an artist is a lonely one and sometimes we need people to talk to.

I see the smiles of people at the farmer’s market and compare them to the grimaces at Safeway. There are fewer people at Safeway but we are always bumping into one another. We all have this common, mental wavelength. “Get out of the way,” we grumble to ourselves. “I need to finish shopping and get out of here.”

No one seems to be in a hurry at the farmer’s market. There, you can talk to the people who grew your food, get a recipe, see your friends, take a bite of sheep’s-milk cheese. You can smell the air, touch a tomato, notice the flowers in the flower vendor’s hat. I don’t see anyone texting either. Mostly, cell phones are away, people are strolling, like they did on the boardwalk at the Jersey Shore when I was a little boy.

I marvel at how readers find me and my blog from around the world. And I feel gratitude for the whole concept of blogging. Our connectedness, even if by glowing computer displays, is making the world a better place. But, when I see young people at a bar texting rather than communicating face-to-face, it makes me sad. When I resort to buying my produce at a corporate entity that crams my brain with canned commercials over its sound system, I feel resigned. So, I have rediscovered the market, where people are people—real live people selling real live produce.

Related posts:

1. Tomatoes in Grasp Hot-house tomatoes come to market early in spring. This is too early for a tomato. Tomatoes herald the beginning of summer—real summer, not some fabrication designed to hurry along a year before its time. Hot-house tomatoes remind me of Christmas decorations that show up before Thanksgiving. Sadly, too many patrons of the farmer’s market succumb [...]...
2. The Market and A Bruised Soul It was raining peacefully on Sunday morning. The streets were washed clean by a storm that had hit the day before. The road shimmered in the weak light, twinkling with each drop from the sky. On a tempestuous Friday before the storm, I’d been hit between the eyes by a hurtful comment from a friend. [...]...
3. The Fish Monger Sunday I bought a fish. Sick of Safeway and its hermetic seals, I went to the farmer’s market. There you know what the food is and from where it comes. Contrary to the Safeway illusion, meat is not born in plastic trays. It comes from animals that once lived. I am not a vegetarian though I [...]...
4. Old Loves Rekindled The dailiness of life has this hum to it. Like an old refrigerator on its last leg, it drowns out the nuances of life. Then the fridge finally dies and…quiet. Birds chirp, you can hear the breeze again. Turning off the electricity might be a prescription for sanity. For years part of my weekly routine was [...]...
5. “Just What Are You Doing?” I stand there with my big, nerdy camera and they look up at me—straight at me. Their glare goes right through the lens and then right through me. I shiver. It’s my least favorite aspect about photography. I am probably the shyest, most self-conscious photographer in the world. The frustrating thing is that I love [...]...
6. Our Own Little World One of the best things about cell phones is that I can now talk to myself in public. Not that many years ago it was considered odd to have a conversation with oneself. Now people are talking aloud seemingly no one just about everywhere. True, they usually have some kind of Bluetooth earpiece attached to [...]...
7. Of Markets and Hands Hands are the most fascinating part of a farmer’s market. This is a recent discovery of mine, thanks to the telephoto lens. I started watching the rummaging hands of market shoppers only a few weeks ago when I zoomed in to reveal a few paws hard at work searching through tomatoes—a show that I’d never [...]...
8. Mystery We encounter other souls all the time. I barely know myself while the complex world passes me by. It doesn’t stop me from wondering. Who are they? What is their story? I notice it mostly when at the Sunday farmer’s market. It is said that ego separation is an illusion, that we are all connected in [...]...
9. Deep into a Morning’s Reflection Staring at the edge of the canal I look down into the morning light. Lately I’ve preferred looking at the sky’s reflection than directly at the real thing itself. Sometimes the sky is too much for morning; too bright and too vast. Its reflection is nearer and more intimate—something into which I get lost. Getting lost [...]...