And the newcomer shows up and writes poetry about it. But that's exactly right, isn't it? Don't we always wish we could live in the first moment of things? That moment of first, blissful, mysterious arrival where everything is new and nothing is common?
In that vein, I write and offer up my observations, however random or clear about the pike place market...as a newcomer to the city of seattle and as a newcomer as an employee at one of the places where we yell and sell things at you. It's fun.
Here we are.
The smell of flowers molds into a confused smell that is both rank and curious. Walking along the market's edge, I enter one of the many fish market's next to the flowers: this is that odd combination of a smell that excites and repulses all at once.
The eclectic smattering of people never ceases to amaze me. Australians, Alaskans, Bulgarians, Japanese, and the people who don't understand enough English to understand the question: "where are you from?" What must their experience of this place or, any place in the states for that matter, be like?what do they see and how do they experience it?
Is this place just a mall that goes by a different name that is in a unique place? So instead of "Springfield mall" it's the beautifully alliterated "pike place market." It's consumerism all the same but if pike place is a mall then it makes me a lot less angry than normal malls. I attest that there is something magical about this place. Something in the air, for sure. A blind man would have a jubilant time in pike place because the smells alone would send him burrowing through different continents and traversing different areas of the world by only taking three steps to his left and taking a deep breath in.
Time to clock back in. More on the regulars next time.
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