Still Nature
19 Nov 2019
Tbilisi, early October, 2019
..mission failed to a kakhetian adventure: came too late to the marshutka.
I discovered the samgori bazaar: after the one in Station Square this one is quite special.
Here russian appears to be more widely spoken than georgian and when I heard georgian it felt like it was spoken backwards.
The Market is next to the railway station, is smaller, yet it has more presence than Station Square: here it is difficult to get lost: you are push to explore it: to absorb every single color, every bit of perfume: it is not a dazing experience, not a labyrinth, not the evolution of the social condition: Samgori Bazar is a still nature.
This city feels like an entire country.
A lady selling plastic bags of different sizes and colors: a poem among fruit and clothes vendors, she looks incredibily sad and by consequences of proximity also the plastic bags.
Anold lady asked me if was nigerian: I bought a head scarf from her shop: I wore it once since then.
I was gifted maroni and grapes.
The spice’s babushke seem to untrust any attempt at communication: bought pepper and the old lady thought I was stealing it after I gave her the money; bought laurel from another who decided to withhold the change and pretendeded I vanished from her sight: realizing I was not buying the trick she gave me a teethless smile and the change.
The fruit vendors kept telling me prices in russian: good thing I know how to count until five.
The mushroom lady was arguing with the herbs lady next to her: I did not want to interrupt such passionate conversation to buy four mushrooms. They were arguing in russian.
On the entrance to the Samgori metro four babushke, all dressed in black, evergreen widows, are selling four naked chickens tightly wrap in plastic film: four widows on the left, four chicken on the right just before the steps down: a silent, raw, performance.
A gipsy on the metro pretending to be a widow walked along the carriages as she were in a solitary procession with an icecream box for the collection of charity.