the market in narration

many apologies for the shortcomings of posts. that they come so short and so few, et cetera. the homework here has teeth, and also my two arms vised within. and so, without much rambling, a short post.

i went to the market. it was a market something like a haymarket. it was once used for the purposes of selling hay, so that horses could be fed as the fable once said. it wasn't a fable was it? where am i? i am in a market. a tall building, with struts strutting along the ceiling. it isn't open air, that is out back, but here, there is a market also. small, miniscule cucumbers deserving of all the diminutive suffixes that can be given them. and ruddy tomatoes also.

i like to see the fish lined up behind glass, all at attention, even if they aren't breathing water anymore. they are comatose in their cold-aired containers. look! they look with the same eyes at me, and their ode de fish still swims in the air as it ever did in the gulf. one of the fish glistened with sweat along his cheek, and i thought maybe he was a foreigner, but maybe it was cold and he just had a cold chill, like the kind you had a year ago when you thought maybe someone you love might die, and what would you do or feel then?

there is a candy store here also.

and outside, out back, that is, behind the big building of which we previously spoke, more stalls! more vegetables! more fruits to horde and fill cheeks!

here the ground in peppered with bits of paper and some sprigs and some lettuce. people are talking quickly, the pace has increased. the space has decreased, especially when carts go by with wooden crates so recently holding fresh within their little cavities. it is nice. they foretell my intentions and the intentions of other shoppers.

i buy some tomatoes. here, they are called pomidori, but i still think of them as tomatoes sometimes. they are red and in the middle. not too big, maam! what is the proper form of address? the plural you is all. or tell me! show me! this language is said to be direct and i forward that to you by way of writing. here is one reason more for the love of it.

--how much are the tomatoes for half a kilogram?
--thirty.
--i will take them.
--for you, thirty dollars.

and now, my accent has given me away. she knows that i am american and i know that she is russian, and we joke about it, because she has a friend that lives in america and she knows thirty dollars is a lot of money for half a kilo, and thirty rubles is fair, because although she knows by my twitches of voice i am american, she also really cherishes people that try to learn her language. it is a complement she takes to heart, and moulders when she returns home.

she gives her cat a white bowl with white cream, pets it twice, and thinks about the confused american trying to buy pomidori, even though he thinks they are called tomatoes.

also, i bought apricots. the man invited me to taste one to test the quality, but i thought maybe i should, but i didn't. the story turned out well in the end, because he also was payed for his solid and upright merchandise.

sometime before going to the market, i bought a coffee at macdonald's. it is the only place that has coffee that has slipped through a filter. unless you think about espresso. espresso goes through a filter, too, but then is added to water, and that is still not like coffee at home, not like coffee at home at all.