I find that the more I live in a foreign city, the more time I take to observe the unnoticed. It's quite unusual, really. I feel as though I am developing a mental disorder- my eye catches the smallest of the most minuscule things, and they always seem to be hilarious. The problem with this heightened 6th sense, if you will, is that no one else seems to notice these quirky little happenings. This is fine, don't get me wrong, but I've started to realize that I give off the impression of being... how to say it delicately... just a little bit off. To further elaborate on this revelation, let me present you with the following, entirely true story. In doing so, I fully acknowledge that many people reading this may see little humor in it. However, to the old souls of both yesteryear and of modern-times that posses the uncanny, quick sense of humor much like that of my own, to you I say, "you're welcome."
I woke up late Sunday morning- the sunlight pouring into my bedroom seemed even brighter than usual. It wasn't the usual warm, gentle sunlight that fills my room with a lemon glow. It was instead a frigid brightness, only further enhanced by a canary yellow filter courtesy of the sheer, ragged dollar-store curtains that hang limply from the curtain rods.
I have developed a bit of a tradition for Sunday mornings. I wake up with the sun, or with the piercing yells of gypsy vendors that sell flowers they cut from the local parks and gardens. Either way, I wake up. I carefully pull the window curtains aside and open the French windows opposite my bed. I mosey on over to the closet that is my kitchen, brew a cup of instant (yet surprisingly delicious) coffee, and mosey back into my room. I peer out the open window, looking to see if people are wearing jackets or not. I always see an even 50/50 of people wearing either heavy pea coats, or a spring cardigan. With no reached conclusion, I then lean most of my upper torso out of the window in order to determine if I need to schlep a jacket with me. I sip on my coffee, putter around my room, sip coffee, make my bed, sip coffee, get dressed, and look for the cup o' joe than I misplaced in between making my bed and getting dressed. I give up the great Sunday coffee-cup hunt, gather my purse and a reusable grocery bag, and clobber down the four flights of stairs of my apartment building. I walk down my street, avoiding the yelling gyspy flower vendors, to the large, intersecting avenue where I catch the metro. Alas, the enormous open-air market.
I don't know what it is about this market in particular, but I always feel like I have walked into a different era. People carry wicker baskets- yes, actual wicker picnic baskets- filling them with bunches of leeks, shiny purple eggplants, fresh loaves of bread, and a bouquet of flowers. Everyone buys a bouquet of flowers on Sunday. Looking at each vendor's stand is an experience in of itself. The produce is always unbelievably gorgeous. The seafood stands, proudly displaying bug-eyed fish, slimy, inky squid, and buckets of different mollusks, emit a stench that lingers even once the market closes. The butchers' stands showcase the finest cuts of steaks, completely intact poultry (from beaks to feet to feathers), meters and meters of sausage links, entire pig heads, and entire skinned rabbits, displayed in such a way that much resembles my memories of dissecting frogs in high school biology. Yum. The noises of the market are a melange of shouts, screaming children, and the haunting sound of a butcher knife against a plank of wood as chickens are decapitated. Yesterday was no different. My sense of wonder remains constant. I wait in line at one of the dozens of produce stands. I bought a head of lettuce, a bunch of fresh basil, a bunch of tomatoes still on the vine, a kilo of red onions, red peppers, and a zucchini for a whopping total of 5 euros. And thus grew my love for my Sunday market.
I walk back to my apartment, begin the great climb up the increasingly steep flights of stairs, and eventually reach the summit- my lungs gasping for air as they adjust to the altitude, my arms straining under the weight of the heavy bags... or maybe I'm just really out of shape. I put my purchases on the dining room table (my bedroom is multi-functional as it is a dining-living-bedroom combo), find the lost cup of now room-temperature coffee which is so obviously placed dead-center on the dining room table, and chug what remains.
This past Sunday, I had plans for a picnic lunch. With my new supply of food, I packed a hearty salad into my always leaking Tupperware, found an old bedsheet and my latest read- a David Sedaris book- and gracefully jammed them all into a plastic shopping bag. I headed out the door, clobbered down the stairs, gypsy-dodged down the street, and allowed the escalator of the metro to carry me up the to the platform that sits on the overpass above my dearest market. I look at the lit up sign that tells me I have a 5 minute wait until the next metro arrives. I usually just stand around and read, but yesterday I decided to live a little and relax on the red painted benches that are bolted to the floors. I take out my book and begin to read.
And so I read, letting myself get swept up in the hilariousness of my David Sedaris book. I read something funny and react instantly by smiling, which leads to a muffled chuckle. I look up from the page to the stained white tiles of the metro platform to see a not quite gray colored pigeon. I realize that this particular bird should actually be white, but is covered in the charcoal grit of the city. Its scrawny legs are a bright salmon color, and have the same texture as a scab. The pigeon zig-zags across the tiled-floor, it's puny talons create a soft tapping noise, much like that of a mechanical pencil, against the ceramic. Much like any pigeon, it was on a quest for anything remotely edible.
This platform had been recently swept, and the floors were barren. The pigeon hobbles on over and pecks at a cigarette butt, which clearly did not meet his dietary standards. Unsatisfied, he turns his body around and continues his prowl. He walks over to some British tourists, looks at them, and turns around. He waddles close to my feet, cocks his head, looks around, pecks at nothing, and walks away. He must have been quite hungry, or was maybe late for a prior pigeon engagement, for his pace quickened. He click-clacked in zig-zags back and forth along a 15 foot radius, hoping that manna had miraculously appeared. Or maybe a piece of stale, chewed-up, spit-out gum. His wobble turned into more of a frantic saunter. His legs pumped back and forth, carrying the weight of his body. Each step was faster than the last. This pigeon broke into the equivalent of a pigeon gallop. And then I witnessed something that I have never seen before in my entire 22 years on this earth. The pigeon skidded across the floor. It was like he was running on black ice. Apparently, pigeons aren't meant to gallop. What caught me off-guard what that it didn't even attempt to fly out of his fall. He just... fell. I knew that if I was capable of flight, I would have been up and at em in a blink of an eye. Call me old-fashioned, but I thought that being able to fly pretty much eliminates any situation of slipping and falling. Have you ever seen a pigeon slip and fall, or any bird for that matter?
The moral of the story, girls and boys, is that I've begun to see the humor in everything. Who says that waiting for the metro has to be dull and uneventful. By taking the time to smell the flowers, I was able to see one of the year's most unusual events. That Sunday, infamous Sunday, will be forever remembered as the day in which I saw a pigeon face plant.
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