MARKET by Ivona Bozik
Portobello Road - London, UK
Two short pieces of poetic prose
MARKET
Markets, city markets, where everything that can be offered gathers: food, music, people with their voices, products, bargains, styles, street fashion in the glamour of wear, stalls as an ornament to the brick streets and enclosed squares, food, food... people with no fear, no shame, no affiliation, no subculture, each individuality on full display, blending in this mass where no one is threatened by no one... bourgeois bohemians at every step, each hippie in its own way; wearing disco-gold from neck to legs, afro haircut as a crown; elegant gown to the ground; come up with a hair-colour and you have it; your ordinariness is always too noticeable. They carry me, without touching, tow me with them, to them, invite, attract me with their glances, moves, calls, singing... in an instant they grab me, flavours, smells, colours, bland kitsch... Here, while walking, I’m kissing the whole city so passionately that our mouths hardly touch, the movement of our tongues so insane that they fail to intertwine, hold, let go, come, get lost, the sound almost prevails over touch, a play of closeness and distancing, a play of attracting and directness... That’s why I rather never stop, I listen to the indistinguishable conversations, sentences planted into a foreign context, words repeated after a few meters: cheap, cheap... I turn when they try to sell me their CDs: it's hip hop, reggae music, you know… only taste, grab something here, something else there, don’t allow to appropriate a thing. An odour of grilled meat, of fresh cheese, grilled vegetable, fresh fruit, the taste of sweet at every step. Folk music in adorable acoustics, concerts following the principle of ‘’give what you want’’, buy, support, clap, whistle, walk on... Retro knitwear, warm coats, chequered shirts, coloured dresses, light sleeveless t-shirts, wool for the shoes... Jewellery, silver, gold, iron, plastic. Life that expires in the moment one turns away into a hidden alley around the corner.
DYNAMIS & ENERGEIA
A notorious and over-used word, on top of everything for her even a foreign one – that perception. All it really meant to her at all, and all it could mean at all in that one precise moment of some days, was this experiencing feeling of her hometown: in the summer, in the evening vapours, it was Mediterranean. By the locals nor the tourists not really crowded streets on which you could feel the nearness of the non-existing port; at that time, railway station was standing there as an actual sign of the European South: the sounds of the taxi-drivers in front of the entrance took her to the old holiday places, to the airports of the world, and the sounds of the announces on the speakers to others, less comfortably neatly pleasant... in the smells of the asphalt, rubber, smokes, rain, fog, sweat, street food, iron, spilled drink or stale urine, in the sounds of the acceleration and deceleration, tooting, the eternal murmuring noise of the language, warning signals of the moving trains, the steady slow rhythm of the traffic light which she hears accelerating only halfway through her crossing, street music... because of all of this it didn’t matter in which city she was, not just its name, location... a universal city in which she was choosing her metropolis or town at any given moment. – Or, at least, while listening to calm piano music, the bed she was lying on could become a bench wherever she wanted. And in a moment, she could move to another.
Ivona Bozik is slovenian, living between Ljubljana and France, passionate about literature, music, art, philosophy and travel. Her prose and texts about literature were published by various Slovenian literary magazines, including AirBeletrina, LUD Literatura and Arslitera. IG @ivonabozik & blog inthesoulsstreets.wordpress.com