a trestle-table flea market in a car park off a residential Berchem street, folding tables loaded with ceramics and stacked paperbacks, a shoebox of loose keys at the near corner, grey flat midmorning light washing down between low brick terrace buildings on three sides — paused mid-sort over an open shoebox of photographs, one photo half-lifted, wind lifting the hem of her skirt
The cup has no saucer and a small chip on the rim that the woman who sold it to me had already turned to face inward before I could see it. I saw it anyway. I bought it.
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Berchem on a Sunday has the quality of a room after most people have left it. Trestle tables in a car park, the kind of market that exists to move things out of attics — ceramics stacked without care, books in Dutch with titles I couldn't read, a shoebox of keys that no longer matched anything. I wore the linen skirt because I'd meant to, and the wind came in off the street and moved the hem around while I stood at a table going through a box of photographs that had belonged to someone named Hilde. Holidays, mostly. A dog that appeared in three different decades. I put them back in the same order I'd found them, which was no order at all.
Trestle tables receding into a car park, ceramics and stacked books in the foreground, one shoebox of keys, hand-lettered price signs in Dutch
The woman who sold me the cup wrapped it in newspaper before I'd asked her to. She folded the corners the way people do when they've done it ten thousand times and the thing matters to them anyway. Two euros. I put it in my bag and carried it the rest of the day like it required something of me.
the same Berchem car park market, seen from two meters behind and to the right — a gap between two trestle tables forms a narrow corridor leading to the market's far end, where a vendor's van sits open, its dark interior framing the grey street beyond — walking out through the gap between tables, the wrapped cup just placed in her bag, bag strap lifted to shoulder, not yet fully gone
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Kiel is residential in the way that means nothing was built for me to do here. I found the café because it had four tables outside and one of them caught the light. Sat down. Ordered a Westmalle. The bottle arrived without a glass — they'd run out, the man said, or something close to that, which was fine with me.
a four-table café terrace on a residential Kiel street, the single occupied table catching afternoon light that falls between two narrow brick apartment buildings across the road, a child's bicycle locked against the wall to the left, an old man on a folding chair visible two doors down in soft focus — bottle of Westmalle just set down on the table, one hand still loosely around the neck, watching the man on the folding chair across the street
I drank from the bottle and watched a Sunday afternoon do what Sunday afternoons do in neighborhoods that have no reason to perform. An old man on a folding chair two doors down. A child's bicycle against a wall, no child. The wind picked up around five and the jacket went on.
Westmalle Trappist bottle on a small metal café table, no glass, half-drunk
The cup was still in my bag, still wrapped. I could feel the newspaper through the fabric.
What she wore
day6-scene1
I wore the linen skirt because Sunday markets deserve something that moves a little when you stop to look at a box of someone else's photographs.
day6-scene2
The jacket went on somewhere between the market and the café — wind off the street, nothing dramatic, just one extra layer and a bag to put the cup in safely.
day6-scene3
Changed into the quieter half of the wardrobe for the last hour — the trousers sit better when you're sitting still, which is all I intended to do.