Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: markets

  • bicycling on

    Finally my bike! There have been various substitute treadlies in between but my own blue bike, bought in Alice Springs a decade back, is now out of storage and dusted and greased and today for the first time we hit the black road. Wahoo! The freedom and terror. Raced down the tumult of traffic to a sleepy golden markets, where under the trees people had laid out vegetables, sprouting herbs, tempting red circles of handmade saucisson. After a coffee and waxy croissant we sauntered out as the stallholders packed up. One was a big bloke with black beard and a huge smile who stopped packing, and straightened, when I said, “Can I take a photo of your red stuff and the red stuff behind? Would that bother you?”

    He grinned. He looked at the bunch of marigolds and bouquet of red rubber gloves and turned to see that behind him, now that the intervening stalls had folded away, the scarlet florals of a fashion stall made another layer of colour. “The red stuff, and the red stuff behind,” he said. “Spoken like a true photographer.”

    I was rummaging in my bag. “Yeah the professional terminology, eh?” I made a dozen photographs with people swiping by obligingly as my coloured-cotton, human scenery. Showed him the last and most successful shot. We wished each other a good week with enormous cordiality and I had the feeling we both would have liked to have given up a hug. On the narrow, shaded road outside the markets I wobbled and nearly fell as a car overtook me within an arm’s length. He accelerated to pass me, even though the standing traffic was banked at the traffic lights metres ahead. When he stopped I swooped round onto his driver’s side and stopped, and spoke to the guy through his unwound window. “Excuse me, Sir. There’s a new law, you have to stay a metre and a half away from the nearest bike, because it’s much safer. Thanks!” And I patted his windowsill familiarly, patronisingly, and pedalled off. It feels good to be back on the bike. But it wouldn’t feel good to be forever extinguished and flattened like a pizza on asphalt because some guy with “fat eggs” as they call it in German wanted to prove he could escape my hand-built speed.

  • little flower

    little flower

    Went onto the market, transformed now with its leafiness half on the ground, and half overhead; I wanted parsley, and something else leafy, maybe spinach, and potatoes. So many types of potato, each ugly in its own precious way, it would be nice to buy one of each and label them with toothpicks (i, ii, iii… xii, xiii, xiv) in order to find out once and for all how in flavour and texture they veer. The buying of parsley I always find a puzzle here: what is the German for a bit, or a bunch? I didn’t like to ask the grumpy lady in mittens who served me today smilelessly. At the smoked fish van in dappling shade I hesitated over the golden reams. A guy was playing steel drums in a kind of trance, which he had transmitted to the several small families swaying in front. I said to the fish seller when he came back in, I’d like a couple of those fillets please. I said, ein Paar: a pair, a married couple, a few. He picked one up in his long curving tongs, like a beak. How many is ein Paar? he asked. Well, I said; actually, two. Ah, he said, laughing: so an actual pair! He began wrapping the fish, chuckling softly to himself. Ego stung me and I wanted to find a cunning way of letting him know this is a second language for me, over just a few sentences people don’t always pick it up. You know, I said, artlessly, guileful: This everyday stuff is the part I find hardest, in German. How many is a few? How much parsley do I need? Is it a posy, a bouquet, a… well, ein Bisschen: a little bit?

    He knotted the paper bag and spun it with that deftness so stylish in stallholders. He was considering my question. Well, he said at last, you can’t go wrong with a little bit. Ein bisschen. It’s not a posy or a “little flower” (“Blümchen”, I had said). Ein Stück, a piece… yes…. you can always buy a piece of parsley.

    Peter Pepper. I took the parcel of fish and stowed it with the parsley in my bag. Thanks, I said. He handed over my change. “And now, you get ‘a little bit’ of money back, too,” he said, using the familiar form of “you”, which gave me a warm feeling as I stowed the piece of money in my pocket and wandered back past all the closing stalls with their shrieks and two for ones.

    H2O HoL markets colourful

  • hitting the child

    Today on the markets I saw a man hit his child. He and his wife were standing among the racks of a bright clothing stall, I did not see what the boy had done but I noticed a woman sitting at her sock & beanie stall knitting had stilled her two needles and taken up watch. He said to his son, We are sick of you today. You must stop this. Look: people are staring. The child looked unhappy. He was maybe 7 or 8. Maybe he had done something monstrous, we were bystanders. I exchanged glances with the sock lady and her mouth tightened. Walking towards the little family I saw that the boy had flung himself on his father, wrapping his body around the man’s leg, his arms tightly clasped round the thigh and his face buried in the fabric of his father’s jeans. The father was speaking to his wife about clothes. I went up close to him. I dropped my hand quietly on his shoulder. “Let him say sorry,” I coaxed.

    “Eh?” He looked up. I repeated, “He wants to say sorry. Let him say sorry.” My hand came up to cup the back of the boy’s small, silky head. “Yeah, yeah,” said the father, dismissively, “we will.” But his own hand crept up into the boy’s hair. Because I think, whether we are parent and child or two adults, by instinct we follow each other’s example. Later I wondered how had I got away with it. Why had the father not slapped me, as well. I think because I had no sense of righteousness, I didn’t feel entitled, I felt irresistibly moved. I felt back to my voice, my tone, and felt its gentleness. I felt the way my eyes were burning with love in my head. You know how you can feel them in their sockets, fires in the skull, your soul on fire inside them, like a pair of windows opening out instead of in.

  • a book’s a passport

    a book’s a passport

    A friend who was enamoured of it took one of my books to Hong Kong, and tried hard to get the lady in the passport booth to stamp it. She would not be persuaded. Instead I received a series of postcards through the mail: Dear Cathoel, it’s a beautiful day in Hong Kong and I am taking your book for a stroll by the river. Dear Cathoel, your book and I are having chicken noodle soup on the markets.

    H2O HoL mossy steps

  • street friendships

    I just fell into one of those instant street-friendships that sometimes lead somewhere and very often don’t. It is so lonely & exacting trying to make a life in a completely new city, I seem to have been doing it over and over the last ten years as I wonder: where is it that the tribe of people ~ who are poets, and deeply sensitive & reflective, and are peace-loving activists, and like to laugh and dance a lot, and care about the world and all who sail in her ~ find their home?

    So this was not a moment too soon. I’d come out of the Underground and was tramping through the snow which has mounted so rapidly all day today. A woman beside me suddenly spoke. “What? Is this Christmas?” She indicated the white sky, the buried trees, the white-piling pavements. “Yes,” I said, “and I was just noticing, I have never seen these kind of tiny snowballs before – they’re not really flakes – they are like drops of water.” “Stimmt,” she said, musingly, gazing at the tiny white balls crunching underfoot. She is a yoga teacher and teaches art therapy. We reached the snowy markets and parted. There were all kinds of activities this weekend, she said, to celebrate Spring – such as it is – and would I like to have coffee in this gallery cafe her mate runs and go for a wander. Well, as it happens yes, I very much rather would. Thank you, snowboat universe.

    H2O HoL sugarbowl

  • the man with bare fingers

    The man with bare fingers playing guitar at the riverside markets, in the snow. He is playing a languid, spooling version of “I’ve Done All the Dumb Things” by Paul Kelly. In his hands it sounds musing rather than regretful. The two Australians drifting in front of me hatless, talking about parties. The boy who writes in the same cafe as me and who gives a shy smile as he passes on the street. The candlelit cafe playing Echo and the Bunnymen: “The Killing Moon.” The shivering persons who have to go outside for cigarettes. The lovely guitarfurl at the end of the song. The manuscript with biro marks all over it.

  • the c-u- in court

    Drowsy today & introspective and I had to sort of tip myself out of the house like the last olive clinging in the jar. The market stallholders seemed to me noisy and boisterous, cheerful in an inflicted way. When I paused in front of a mound of strawberries the guy shovelled a dozen punnets into a bag and thrust it at me, saying, One Euro. A little further on, a stall of organic produce, flecked apples and satisfyingly plump brown mushrooms. “I’d like 400g of those please and a lemon and a….” Reaching into my stash of German words I realized I’d no idea what is the collective noun for leaves of spinach. A bunch? A bouquet? A posy? I can’t say any of these things in German. “… a piece of spinach, please.” She was already stacking it into the bag I had handed her. “A piece! I like that.” “How would you normally say it?” “Ah, well… I’d like some of that spinach, or a little of your spinach, or a bag of spinach… But I like ‘piece.’”

    In German piece and peace are different sounds but I do love the way they have named their cemeteries: literally the resting place, “the peace court.” Court as in shared space: courtyard. So I guess höflich (polite) means really, courtly. God… that was exhausting. But at least I have a mountain of strawberries to fill my bath.

  • we were dancing

    we were dancing

    On the Weihnachtsmarkt before it closed I had this most marvellous adventure. Rounding the corner my friend & I following the thread of sound came on these two solemn, courtly black American musicians, not young, setting forth the Gospel According to Lionel Richie. I have never been a convert but somehow the lissom groove of All Night Long got underneath my skin. I started to wiggle, stepping tentatively, dancing. My friend went rigid with embarrassment: Cathoel don’t! My arms were full of parcels and my boots were caked in snow but I danced. The dudes onstage picked up their feet, the groove came issuing from them, I love it when music is hired but you feel the mastery and its freedom. You can’t buy me!

    Now, I was shy! this took some effort! but I had to, the sinew of the tune was irresistible: the thread. Within a few bars this strange miracle had started to happen. A lady near me raised her beaker of Glühwein and danced a little shimmy for her stolid male partner, jokingly. Our eyes met and she kept dancing. Within moments it seemed all the crowd was moving. We were dancing! We were dancing. At the end of the song another came and we all danced to that too. Then I shimmied away up the alleyway between the lighted stalls, night was coming on and it was so cold, women and men were laughing and showing one another their moves and applauding in little local circles and the sense of a shared joy gave everything this golden warmth; everything but the sky, the snow, the cobblestones. As the strains of sound fell back behind us we came round another corner and there people were skating, silent and as if motionless, around and around in a spellbound circle. Because I constantly battle my shyness I have started groups of people dancing before, but never with such universality. And this seemed a middle-aged, cold-stamping crowd. Maybe that’s why, in fact. Nothing to lose.

    deutsch iii

     

     

  • olivewood

    On the market I bought a tiny chopping block made from olive wood. It’s dense and silky and only a little larger than my spread hand. I was about to hand over the money when he said, Some of the trees are 500 years old! How is that a selling point? My eyes filled with tears. 500 years? Yet someone’s hacked it down to chop onions on?

    The guy explained. When the tree stops fruiting. They plant a new tree. So the old one. Has to go. A few stalls later I bought a bottle of cloudy oil pressed from some other olive tree. In a furniture store in Adelaide my friend and I found foldable patio settings carved out of ‘plantation teak.’ Teak too takes hundreds of years to mature. I remember how bleakly we marvelled at it: What prescient person realized, half a millenium back, that one day we would need stands of teak? Why is there not a statue to this innovative forester on every town square and in every school?

     

  • knifegold

    An hour ago I made friends with two Israeli dudes selling Vietnamese knives on a drearily dripping, cheerily lighted Berlin market. It is so warming and cozy to wander under damp vinyl awnings and it has been so frustrating trying to chop vegetables with a bread knife all these weeks.

    One was called Coia and the other something even more beautiful which I forget. They stood there in their pigtailed dreads and ludicrously cute knotty woollen hats, relaxed with hands in pockets, offering one carrot after another so I could slice and scrape and find out all the properties of the knives laid out like eyeless sharks on the flowered cloth. Thinner, lighter blades go through things easily and are best for small vegetables and watery stuff (like fruit). Denser blades suit heavier applications like meat and potatoes and bone. You can sharpen your blade every six months or so on the underside of a ceramic plate, and Coia demonstrated for me what the sound should be like (a kind of tabla whoomph). A few stalls along the Turkish keycutter had a whompa-slupf, whompa-slupf going from behind his counter somewhere and I stopped to ask is that music? Or is it a machinery.

    Turns out it’s a machinery. But it had this sort of repetitive organic quality like two taps dripping at a sink that made me want to record a sample and build something over the top of it. Key music, knife music. Market friendships. Golden lights.