As I peddle back from yoga, I stop at an intersection's red light. A small elderly woman clutching a plastic water bottle waits to cross in front of me at the sidewalk's edge. Adjacent, a group of yellow-vested construction workers jackhammer away under a sun that is already hot at 9:36AM. Pond's "30,000 Megatons" plays in my earbuds. Sometimes I wonder if we are inching closer to a time in history where the term "megatons" might be seen in the news with increasing frequency. The crosswalk turns green and the woman shuffles out into the road, meeting a homeless man carrying his wares at the halfway point. She deftly hands the water bottle to the homeless man in one fluid motion and they exchange the subtlest of nods and smiles without breaking stride. The light turns green, the men jackhammer away, and I peddle on into a Friday that will surely be a good day.
"The Artist at Work" (a snippet) - Albert Camus
"...But Jonas's new friends almost all belonged to the species of artists and critics. Some had painted, others were about to paint, and the remainder were painted. All, to be sure, held the labors of art in high esteem and complained of the organization of the modern world that makes so difficult the pursuit of those labors, as well as the exercise of meditation, indispensable to the artist. They complained of this for whole afternoons, begging Jonas to go on working, to behave as if they weren't philistines and knew the value of an artist's time. Jonas, pleased to have friends capable of allowing one to go on working in their presence, would go back to his picture without ceasing to answer the questions asked him or laughed as the anecdotes told him.
Such simplicity put his friends more and more at ease. Their good spirits were so genuine that they forgot the meal hour. But the children had a better memory."