I FOUND MY WAY into the Met one afternoon in early September. I guess I wanted to see what other people had done with their lives, people who had made art alone, who had stared long and hard at bowls of fruit. I wondered if they’d watched the grapes wither and shrivel up, if they’d had to go to the market to replace them, and if, before they threw the shriveled strand of grapes away, they’d eaten a few. I hoped that they’d had some respect for the stuff they were immortalizing. Maybe, I thought, once the light had faded for the day, they dropped the rotted fruit out an open window, hoping it
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