Slice of Life, Genova., originally uploaded by - di.

I loved this shop, near the end of Via di Porta Soprana and the beginning of the plunge into the long narrow street called Via Canneto il Lungo, a favourite place in the city.

I tried to write of this shop ... it was quite fanciful in one sense but in another, it's what came to mind whenever I passed by or entered it to by soap and wonder about everything else.

That man whose shop seemed jammed full of things from Genova and other faraway places. The kind of merchandise that could only arrive in a ship with rigging and sails, a ship that belonged to an old Genovese trader who discovered islands by chance while wandering the oceans looking for soaps and ropes for this shopkeeper waiting back home in his tiny store in this narrow Genovese street.