Rainy Market

What a difference a season can make.

Back what seems like an eternity ago I posted from this right here spot about how lovely the Farmer's Market was.

The post is here.

Now, past the one-third point in October, there is a vastly different feel to the Market.  It's rainy, people are layered, with heavy caps, some wearing gloves, some with Bean Boots, all leaning against the push of the wind, all damp with the blowing rain.

Just over half the usual compliment of farmers are selling in the square.  I think it's partly the weather but mostly I think it's the ending of the harvest.  When the Brussels sprouts (I wonder if the Belgians have Portland sprouts?) come in then you know we're near the end of the season.

There is a Harvest Festival this weekend - I'm tempted to be a part of the 5K run they're hosting - but this one involves taking part in a meal at the end of each third of the race - I'm not sure my "level of training" will take the stress - put another way I'm just as liable to lose whatever I eat as hang onto it.

Beer especially.

Working part-time has its liabilities - cash flow, health insurance, that kind of thing - still, when asked I'm able to reply "keeping body and soul together - mostly soul".

This is not a bad state of affairs.  For good or ill I have spent years - over two decades - trying to meet the expectations of other people, with my own needs kind of sandwiched in along the side.  Being able to do so - well, if not wisely - was a modestly lucrative way to support my life.

So, now, with so much more time - and so much less money - I find I am able take time to hear myself, to listen to others.  It's rather like how one's eyes adjust to turning off the lights in a room - you adjust and then detail begins to appear.

I recommended the same trick to my music students - to go outside late, late at night when the sound of business and obnoxious life have died away - your ears begin to hear more and more as the dull roar of classroom machinery - air conditioning, vacuum cleaners, clocks and whatnot - dies away.  You can hear cars in the far distance, crickets, deer in the woods.  

The sound of each individual wave striking the shore.

And finally this bears fruit when looking at the Market.  

So much more is there than was present back when I first started down this path.  People seem more interesting - they way they walk, they way they bend over to ask or answer questions.  The wind blows the tents, some of them threaten to take off flying - a team of helpers hold onto a tent labeled "pastured pork".

More things to see, less to look at - two women with five one-gallon jugs of cider between them, chatting, warm in the middle of the wind and rain.

It's pretty certain that I would have seen all of this back when the weather was warm and summer frocks were everywhere in the Square - somehow I find this a lot more amenable - new things that I've never had time to see when teaching.

Perhaps the greatest gift is time.  That and a good pair of Bean Boots.