Yesterday evening I was walking through the sunny streets of Melbourne, when I came upon an old lady pottering about the footpath, collecting all the tiny dried leaves that littered the pavement, and putting them into a milk carton. She hadn’t even opened up the top of the milk carton – she was shoving each leaf laboriously in through the spout. Picking up every one of hundreds of leaves, maybe thousands. Placing each one into the milk carton.
It was one of the dark blue, one-litre milk cartons of the Pura brand. As I walked past, I could see that it was almost full with tiny, dried leaves.
I said hello as I passed the old lady, and she said hello in return. But then, as I was walking away, I stopped and turned.
‘Wouldn’t it be easier to sweep all of them up into a box or something?’ I enquired.
‘Yes,’ said the lady, in a dazed, happy tone. I don’t think she was actually responding to my question, but perhaps to some other possibility which existed only inside her head.
It’s lucky for her that the evenings stretch so late here at the moment.
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