One day, as often happens in a writer's life, I woke up uninspired.
Unfortunately, my livelihood still depends on delivering stuff, so skipping a day wasn't an option.
Instead, I decided to walk to the museum to look at the result of other people's inspiration: sculptures and paintings.
I've been to the museum enough times to know that, even though they say you should use euro coins for the lockers, my chip for the shopping cart works just as well. I've also tried enough cakes there to say strawberry is your best bet.
I know the entire layout of the place by heart and where my favorite paintings hang.
Once again, I was drawn to Adolph Menzel's Piazza d'Erbe in Verona.
On previous visits, I had already spent a lot of time trying to discover all the things happening there—such as the lady seen on a window at the top right, seemingly beating the dust from a carpet or duvet, or the guy center-left whose bird is about to be stolen by the guy climbing on the table...
This time, though, my thoughts started going elsewhere. Sure, there is a guy in the front looking into his mug, probably calculating whether the coins in there were enough for a meal, but it's also a bustling scene you're unlikely to associate with the term market these days.
The more time I spent looking at it, the more it fascinated me, while romanticized views of the markets fought with my general dislike for noisy crowds. If I were in that picture, I'd probably run to get my errands done asap and get the hell out.
But as a spectator of this scene, I can enjoy it - all while feeling some serenity and a false nostalgia for something I never had.
A market in Verona.
Markets...
When you hear that term in crypto, your thoughts immediately go to price charts.
Others will also think of that abstract concept of the economy and how stocks and shares aren't doing great. The market is doing this, and the market is doing that.
The market, though, started as a place where we'd go to buy our bread, tomatoes, olive oil, spices, and whatever else you need for girl dinner. They were a central point of villages and tended to fulfill a social function as much as aiding consumption.
The other weekend, I went to an offline market.
Yeah, weird branding. But it seems that many people will think markets exist online first. Or how else do we explain that they had to call it that?
And fair enough, all the vendors - disappointingly, few nice postcards there - were mainly selling through Instagram or Etsy. Many of the items were clearly in the grasp of Filterworld: pastel colors, cute mugs, the type of Instagram-able aesthetic your favorite interior influencer will rock.
It felt a bit surreal.
An offline market that was so online.
Feeling that things become less of their true selves isn't something limited to me and attending an offline market in 2024.
We don't go to the markets anymore to buy our daily food staples. We go to supermarkets.
And while their awfully efficient, going to them is not an event.
It's a chore.
If you're lucky, you get to witness scenes like someone stubbornly refusing to use a basket, dropping two glasses of jam in quick succession while queuing, running back to get new ones without doing anything to address the broken glasses.
There's also the occasional high school boys group encouraging one of them to provoke the security guard or a nice grandma chatting away.
I bet cashiers could write books. If they did it at the speed of Aldi cashiers scanning items, they'd be done in a day.
Most of my visits are uneventful, blending one into the other without differentiation.
Whether I go to Aldi in my neighborhood or another, they all look the same.
Optimized to funnel people through the isles to the cashier and out, it's not just the interior that's all the same. In the grand scheme, all of us are made the same.
Sure, if you go many times, eventually, your face is remembered and you might even be greeted friendly.
For a homo economics, the supermarket is much closer to the ideal of a market. Less time wasted, all the products gained.
It's frictionless.
Especially if you go beyond my local Aldi to an Amazon Fresh store, sure, it was powered by AI (All Indians), yet for consumers, it meant going in, picking items, and leaving—no interaction with another human.
Like a machine that takes people in and spits them out with a few goods in their pocket.
"It has lost its soul in its attempt to perfect the idea of the market."
This homogenization and reduction of the human is at the core of what appeals to me in the chaotic, loud image of the Piazza in Verona.
The same sensibility makes me love flea markets and the occasional visit to the weekly farmers' market instead of ordering via Rewe delivery.
The older I get, the more I find frictionless to be unappealing.
Sure, it is convenient and fast.
But does making everything everywhere the same really give us a better experience, or do we just end up with a one-size-fits-all that does not fit anyone?
Do we really gain that much?
Going back to where all of this started, if I were in the painting, sure, I'd try to finish my errands.
But I'd also probably have a few conversations along the way. I'd negotiate the price for apples and snack on a few free samples at the cheese stand. I could feel generous and give the guy with the mug a coin and help up the kid who fell on the left.
It'd take me time to finish my groceries.
But it'd be worth it.
I'd meet people from all backgrounds.
Even just knowing they are real, I bet, does something to a society when online, we can so easily exclude and delude ourselves into believing we're part of a majority when really we aren't.
Menzel was a devoted painter, drawing incessantly.
But he did more than just create a mere representation of the world.
He imbued it with something more profound—his philosophy.
Beauty is where there is truth. Truth is everything.
Adolph Menzel
Thanks for reading đź’š
This isn't to say we should quit supermarkets.
It's just a reminder that making everything more seemingly efficient might remove something valuable, not in the economic calculus, but in human experience.
As long as they exist, I'll go to markets; they, after all, have the freshest Fischbrötchen (fish sandwich) in town.
