Performed at SOLID HANG Presents / Mothra : A Night of Epic Storytelling by Terna Tilley-Guiado, December 1, 2004

Brisk day, the usual cozy scarf and wooly socks, no funny hat though. I lace my boots and step in to the windy and windy streets. My feet wobble occasionally on the cobblestones, I twist and bend with the indecisive roads to the Saturday Market. I bring my own wooden basket, like all the rest, some obviously used for years and one donning a grandson’s crayon picture. The granite square is bustling and bursting with the hunger crazed multitudes. The wind snaps them when they stop paying attention to it. Lines zig and zag in every direction queuing up for foods I’ve never seen. I circle and peer, poke and inquire, jar and investigate the infinite goodies to be had. The air mulches and bleeds odors never transfused before, a blood, sausage banana? An oyster omelet? A honey trout potato? My eyes flare in accordance with my senses.

I see a woman shamelessly gnawing on a potato pancake, neglecting her wailing child, mesmerized by its delicate and tugged steamy magic. It’s lumpy tomato dressing slides off to one side. She slowly, methodically and with tender precision mashes massive swallows in to her throat, on the heels of the last mouthy gulp. Her eyes glazed over and her neglect increasing, she pursues every fateful nosh with utter devotion. I dare interrupt her, her perfect culinary nirvana, with an obvious, selfish and child-like inquiry, “Where can I get one?” I say as if guilty of something I don’t know. Her eyes slowly roll up, take me in to focus, and with an innocent and silent head tilt illuminate a particular line. I turn to, she continues, the child wails on.

I queue up with the anxious others and nuzzle my nose in to the air following traces of intangible food. With crazed anticipation, I watch baker’s dozens bagged and toted off and a perfect mathematic equation develops between my stomach and my being’s physical relation to the front of the line. My desire for food grows in unimaginable units of intensity with each step I take forward, until, I am suddenly at the front of the line. For the first time I have full view of the infinite possibilities; the infinite crates, baskets, various woven what-nots which piles rolls, breads, pancakes, sausages, biscuits, truffles, pair turn-over-what-have-you’s and every other imaginable fantastic gift from a fat God baked on that very morning by the same plump, rosy, chilly, Irish woman who barks orders in my face and bags hot treats before my eyes. Confused and overwhelmed, I look into her bloodshot eyes. She stares right back and in the thickest of country accents she says, “nnn, whattaya be wanton der yung fella?” My head jiggles as I snap to, I mutter some rehearsed request, but it comes out all vowels. “Now, yur gunna hafta do bitter dendat, yung minn.” Not thinking, jumping on impulse, I utter, “One of everything…mamm.”

Hands full, rocking back to carry the load, I find a cold wet granite stone perch. I sit mashing warm treats in my face. With each piping hot and tender sausage I carefully insert in to my gullet, the temperature increases, each steamy biscuit I chomp in half, the sun pokes it’s head a little more, each truffle I inhale, the wind nips a little less. In no time at all, I’m sun bathing in the parched Serengeti.

Content, like a plump Buddha, I emerge from my damp market corner and reenter in to the Saturday swirling madness. Baskets full of produce, orders yelled, lines reinventing themselves, vegetables weighed, a weeks worth of planning and a mornings worth of hustle and labor unfold around me.

Like an intricate TI83 equation, X + Y and a parabola gone wrong, I watch physical patterns emerge with each of the wind’s strong arm blows. Owners grab cart umbrellas, men stricken coats, women hold hats, and children clutch mum.

I pluck a wet, cold, purple-grey stone from a heap and hand it to a chuckling Irishman with a shark skin face donning a steel glove. He snaps it open, I flip him a coin, then suck out the fleshy goo, washing it down with the sea water still inside. My tongue smells like the underside of a wooden boat and tastes like the sea.

Basket now brimming, quite like my tummy, and with fingers a shade blue, I decide to head back to my warm home. As I head out, a bitter and predictable wind prepares behind me. I hear it ripping and steaming to swarm the assembled. With nasty force and terrible intentions it cracks the square, snatching hats, tearing plates, fraying fabric, punching potatoes and scattering small children. I turn to see. It rips me in the eyes and freezes me in the face. The army of usual dealers hands grasp for their carts and umbrellas to prevent catastrophe. Slap! Smack! Clap! The children scream bracing the force, parents squint, bow their face and lean in to the beast. With everyone at 45 degree angles, like Rommel’s Asparagus, the zenith reaches. Wind screaming like the very babies it terrifies, a seafood dealer’s grasp is not enough. His massive steel cart, brimming with shrimp, muscles, oysters, fillets and fish heads, weighted by endless pounds diced ice, sucks into the air and flips helplessly above. Its aerial maneuvers are displayed in slow motion, then…is abruptly reinserted in to real time. The cart smashes to the ground. The awful noise of bending metal and slapping seafood silences the crowd. As well as the wind. In total quiet, miscellaneous seafood scatters in 180 degrees, slowly skidding to a stop. People look to their feet to see a bug-eyed shrimp asking “Why?” In this bizarre denouement, the masses look to the lonely cartless seaman. He tilts his head, strokes his wet beard and says in a contemplative tone, “Iee, such is life.” Stepping over a cod, I turn and head down my rambling stone road.