...in which i try to be only a pair of eyes but my brain follows like a loving and persistent pet dog.

saturday:  it's sunny and after a week of rain i appreciate this. 

the market, you smell the meat before you see it.  piles of sliced beef, flies, dogs waiting below.  halves of animals hanging, heads on countertops, intact naked dead chickens, a stack of white legs with pink hooves, sawn off at the knee. pigs?  they're huge and a bit translucent 

my vegetable lady waves, 

she's sitting on a platform, halfway up a mountain of food, 

comes down a precarious set of steps that are really just a pile of wooden crates

a kiss on the cheek. 

what will you take?  

i list unfamiliar names for familiar things.  papas, zanahorias, cebollas.

she thows in a green lumpy thing for free, 

"it's like zuccinni!

ciao mamasita, ciao-ciao!"

a five year old boy wants to carry my groceries for me, but i don't have much and they fit in my purse. 

"lo siento, no necesito"

walking home, i think about the argument that most people on the streets don't really need the money they're asking for. 

i think about the relativity of "ability" to work, (doesn't  being a single mom with five kids impede your ability to work?  doesn't old age, young age, blindness in one eye, inability to speak the dominant language, cultural alienation impede your ability to work? these are the situations of many of the people who ask me for money here)

i wonder how much any of us "need" the money we get, and how slippery the term "work" is. 

the mom trying to take care of five kids isn't "working", she's just asking for money. 

telemarketers, on the other hand, "work", even if they're just calling people and ripping them off. 

which of the two is actually doing something good and useful?

well, i guess that's a different thing than work, whatever it is. 

busses pass, the outsides painted like 70s bowling alleys, and where you expect to see a destination or route number you see jesus, or sometimes che.  once, chuck norris.  

strung along the inside of the windshield: tinsel, pom poms, religious icons.  

the door stays open all the time.  when you get on the driver takes your money and gives you change with one hand while he drives with the other.  

the coins are stacked neatly in a wooden box with rows for each size, hand made. 

about half the people on the street are indigenous, small ladies (some of the older ladies don't even come up to my shoulder) in fancy elaborate skirts and shawls, modelled after high society fashion of two centuries ago, with long stockings and classy men's hats.  two long thick neat braids, to the waist, with sort of an ornamentation at the bottom to make the bit of unbraided hair look nice. 

the sidewalks are covered in exploded balloons.  a piece of yellow rubber falls off the wall beside me as i walk past and flutters downwards.  

a waterballoon explodes on a wall between me and a girl walking ahead of me and we jump. 

"de donde...?" (how do i say "it came from?"...  who knows)

"creo alla".. (over there) 

a marching band thumps and jubilates nearby.  every weekend.  the birds in our garden compete with the trumpets.  petares, small fireworks, go off somewhere.  every weekend.  

i pass the marching band, it's more like a roaming pack of kids, my age or younger. no uniforms.  one guy has stopped playing to talk on his cell phone.  a party is following them around, kids in the front doing elaborate footwork as they dance ahead, reminding me of movies like hair and grease.  kids behind jumping up and down like they're in a mosh pit, yelling and carrying alcohol in pop bottles which they pour into the glasses they drink out of.   everyone's ecstatic.  the band doesn't seem to have any kind of itinerary, it just weaves through the city.  traffic doesn't seem to mind. this is a normal occurrence.