Penny for Your Thoughts

In the middle of the work week, I wandered into a local thrift shop. A pretty handsome, Manhattan store-front that looked like it had once been a large restaurant. I got the impression the owners lived in the building as well. Ah, the life. If someone paid me to visit thrift stores, I'd be one of those folks who says they love their job. Having my own? Now that is just fancy talk.  Especially since it would have to have a pub, a coffee bar and room for my band to play.  The Duran Duran cover band where I play tambourine and shoot portraits of famous people on the side.  


As I chatted with the woman behind the counter, I decided, "yep, this is gonna be a good one." Every thrift store visit is an archaeological dig. I've been known to leave a store with everything from silk, couture evening gowns for a dollar to like-new living room furniture at a 95% discount. I don't consider myself a shopper. I'm an adventurer.  


I didn't spend a cent this visit but left with something more valuable than anything I'd ever come across. 


I found a life. In a box. 


There was a section of old photos. Not the turn-of-the-twenty-first-century photos you giggle over at a flea market, but lots of regular photos circa 1980.  None of them were particularly interesting except as I dug, I started to notice the same face in each photo.  I sifted forward and backward. Hundreds of photos all cast with the same woman in each scene. I realized they were in order and started at the back.  


It looked like the late fifties or sixties. She was a little girl.  She was an athlete. A dancer. She was in a religious ceremony. She had a new dress? A birthday girl. A cheerleader. Then she was a young actress. Arms around cast members. Posters outside of theaters. She's holding a brush.  She's a painter. Still life. Landscapes. Then the pictures of landscapes and still lives. A photographer. Pictures of the inside of an apartment. Another. Her plants. Her cat. She's at a party. She's visiting her parents? More paintings and photography. She's looking thinner. She looks sadder. She's in a bed. She's in another one. She's in a hospital. She's got family sitting around her on pillows. She's got bandages on her head. More landscapes. They stop.


I enjoy visiting cemeteries.  I like to think about the brief, scarce clues I read on a headstone and imagine the life of the decayed body under the ground just below my feet. I like stories. The stories of the objects in every thrift store I venture into. History is full of stories of the dead. I didn't know I would find such a complete, simple and beautiful one in a box at a store. Life is in everything isn't it? 


I left the shop loving my every breath.