It's a bustling summer day, folks jostling for the ripest melons or the freshest flowers, stalls bursting with color, smell and texture as the crowd flows ever on. My list is long, and I've got lots to take in, and lots to buy, before the morning's old.
A mandolin sings suddenly, gentle yet insistent, then a fiddler adds her strain -- and all at once my cheeks are wet, some secret sadness welling up, massive and unknowable. Everyone I miss, or have ever missed, pulls at me like a black hole in the center of the farmers market. Their shades call me, and I dance along the unseen edge as the bluegrass wafts between the berries and the lettuces.
Why does bluegrass make me blue? It's never been a genre I sought out, or one I really knew till a few years ago. Now it's everywhere, part of the latest urban farming, homesteading and crafting craze, and I can tell a hammer dulcimer from an autoharp at 50 paces. There's something in it, like good old style country music, that grabs the heart and opens it, willing or no, and makes you listen. Why, it makes you wonder, is the world the way it is? Why do we create such madness, and inflict such pain? Why is he, or she, not here with me?
A singer joins in, and I notice others in the crowd sniffling, or wiping an eye as we all mourn our childhoods, our loved ones, the pure and pristine land and ways that might live only in our fantasies. It's a sad and perfect day, sweet and bitter, and the music calls us all to dance along that narrow precipice. The berries and the lettuces will be waiting when the song comes to a close.
With a Perspective, I'm Peggy Hansen.