Monday, October 26, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Sunday, October 4, 2009
new moon over c-town.
tonight, i am a tourist in this strange town. i pretend i'm not just a train ride away and wander aimlessly, my thoughts meandering even further from any sort of destination. i'm enjoying this. i'm even enjoying chinatown (there's a first):
on a cool october night, chinatown is actually quite charming. the brassy frenzy that hacks through the daytime hours turns into a luminous hum of street-side cartel. rickshaws of fruit border the sidewalks, peddling their fresh, exotic (and illegal) mangosteen, rambutan and various sorts of lychees. a sturdy, older chinese woman with an anxious smile gestures her leather hands for my attention as i steer past. she stands guard, nestled between a "3 for $10" pashmina sign and a makeshift "jade and silver rings" storefront, and she's selling grapes. just grapes. a shallow box sheathed with these plump, round bunches of green for $1.25 per pound makes me wonder. are they that good? are these seemingly average grapes really worth her idle time on the sidewalk? could she have found a more 'exotic' fruit to sell? i wonder what she makes in a day. could it be more 'fruitful' than the boombox b-boys panhandling on the trains? i wonder how long she's been out here and at what hour or number of bunches sold does she decide to pack up and head home? and where's home? what's it like? why grapes when she could be bootlegging mangosteen, instead?
i wonder, but i shuffle along anyway. i'll ask another day. for now, an upsurge of crashing voices draws my attention across the street to an open-air seafood market. a crowd of people are huddled around a gangly man safeguarding two styrofoam coolers, their lids weighed down by a short wooden plank that is also topped with a fist-sized rock. he's yelping responses in chinese- one hand gripping a large, crawling lobster in the air while the other hand pulls a cigarette to and from his mouth in alternating puffs between each shrill call. it's 10:12pm and he's auctioning the live shipment. his languid pose clashes with the impatient crowd. but the glow of the store's flourescent lighting matches their intensity. i'm drawn into the animated exchange, watching it like a final-four game on a glowing television in my darkened living room.
30-second commercial break.
In a nearby alley, behind the back door of a bustling restaurant, a circle of uniformed kitchen staff crouch low on their heels, passing smokes. their weary eyes are oblivious to the lobster mash happening on the other end of the block. they only communicate in short exhales.
.....
sleepy. finish later.
on a cool october night, chinatown is actually quite charming. the brassy frenzy that hacks through the daytime hours turns into a luminous hum of street-side cartel. rickshaws of fruit border the sidewalks, peddling their fresh, exotic (and illegal) mangosteen, rambutan and various sorts of lychees. a sturdy, older chinese woman with an anxious smile gestures her leather hands for my attention as i steer past. she stands guard, nestled between a "3 for $10" pashmina sign and a makeshift "jade and silver rings" storefront, and she's selling grapes. just grapes. a shallow box sheathed with these plump, round bunches of green for $1.25 per pound makes me wonder. are they that good? are these seemingly average grapes really worth her idle time on the sidewalk? could she have found a more 'exotic' fruit to sell? i wonder what she makes in a day. could it be more 'fruitful' than the boombox b-boys panhandling on the trains? i wonder how long she's been out here and at what hour or number of bunches sold does she decide to pack up and head home? and where's home? what's it like? why grapes when she could be bootlegging mangosteen, instead?
i wonder, but i shuffle along anyway. i'll ask another day. for now, an upsurge of crashing voices draws my attention across the street to an open-air seafood market. a crowd of people are huddled around a gangly man safeguarding two styrofoam coolers, their lids weighed down by a short wooden plank that is also topped with a fist-sized rock. he's yelping responses in chinese- one hand gripping a large, crawling lobster in the air while the other hand pulls a cigarette to and from his mouth in alternating puffs between each shrill call. it's 10:12pm and he's auctioning the live shipment. his languid pose clashes with the impatient crowd. but the glow of the store's flourescent lighting matches their intensity. i'm drawn into the animated exchange, watching it like a final-four game on a glowing television in my darkened living room.
30-second commercial break.
In a nearby alley, behind the back door of a bustling restaurant, a circle of uniformed kitchen staff crouch low on their heels, passing smokes. their weary eyes are oblivious to the lobster mash happening on the other end of the block. they only communicate in short exhales.
.....
sleepy. finish later.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
