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Torches thronged gently down stately Andrassy Avenue today, protesting in support of Fidesz in their latest battle with the European Commission, who earlier this week demanded a return of media pluralism, judiciary independence, and constitutional balance in Hungary. ‘Freedom from external oppression’, ‘Let our country be’, and ‘Don’t forget your euros when you leave’ spread the signage, while nearby flame-wielding participants took advantage of the opportunity to window shop Frey Willie and Louis Vuitton.
Some participants, clearly confused, carried torches coloured red, white, and green. A few mistakenly waved the Hungarian Democratic Republic flag, failing to remember that this march called for the version containing the crown.
January 21, 2012
You don’t ignore claimed piles so much as cast a sideways glance, only stopping to check out the truly attention-grabbing, judging the distance from the pile claimant the object of your fancy sits. Close enough, and metal, and you’re looking at bargaining, or on occasion a gruff, territorial ‘taken’. On the outskirts, a book or record is generally ignored, or good-naturedly discussed. Depends on your approach, really. Lovely fellow scavengers have offered up piles of hats as they ran across them, because they’d noticed desire. Bargaining is of course compulsory should claim have already been laid. Patiently holding out cash works far more often than the walk-away. It’s good to know people, get into conversations, become familiar – possibly the only occasion in which talking to strangers works, unless you’re an old lady, in which case it’s essentially expected of you. At all times.
Sitting in an upholstered secessionist chair, contemplating how to get it home but mostly distracted by the goings-on of trucks and scout-wanderers, a passing woman tosses ‘nice find’ from my left, just enough of a pause to test the conversational waters.
‘Thanks. Incredible the things people throw away.’
A truck passes. ‘Any good furniture?’ nodding towards the towering pile behind.
‘Dresser, deco’
‘Thanks’ drifts back as they slowly drive on.
‘Got a car?’ the woman queries.
‘Nope.’
‘Where you headed?’
‘VIIth’
‘We could take you.’
‘Yeah?’
‘How much you want to pay?’
‘Ah.’
’2000.’
‘Zona taxi?*
She shrugs and wanders off. After a few more minutes of gazing pleasingly at the mild mayhem surrounding me I look up.
‘What’s wrong with me?’
‘I do not know.’
‘Why didn’t I bargain? She would’ve taken 500, and now we’re stuck in the XIIth. In a pleasant carnival, certainly, but stuck none the less.’
‘I do not know.’
Though a thumb out hitchhiking attempt did provide the alluring offer of ‘sure, if you’re very, very nice to me,’ we took the bus. When one of the two doors at the baby carriage loader refused to comply in the opening ceremony, the driver unsealed the front door in a rather obvious fashion and waited patiently whilst wrangling the chair through and my plunking the thing down in the standing room area, his heavy gas foot slipping me right into my desired seat for the entire, twisty journey down to Moskva Tér. Though the apparent instability of said seating arrangement prompted no shortage of sniggering from fellow passengers, it paled in comparison to the amusement garnered after we’d strapped the thing to a bicycle and sauntered the 3.7 miles home down the nagykörút.
Lomtalanitas
“It’s terrible! He visits his mother only every six months. I just went to visit him a month ago, and now he talks about coming to visit me next month! He wants to smother me!” She kicks a half-rolled movie poster tipped inside a torn mesh hamper as punctuation. I nod, continuing my hunt for the pair to the child’s hand-sewn boot I’d just found, complete with shoemaker’s mold.
“Have a cigarette, dear, I’ll just be another minute.”
“Oh, I quit.”
“What, why?”
“He doesn’t like it when I smoke.”
“So, what have you been doing lately?”
“I’m in the kitchen, I made jams and jelly, lunch and dinner, pogacsa, cakes, you know. And a lot of sewing, as usual.”
“Fun, then.”
“I love it!”
“So what would he be interrupting, by visiting?”
“He wants to trap me! I am a free spirit, not a wife!”
Back turned, street as sound, shut out, filtered through, depending. Hide in plain view, read. Listen. You. World. You.
Open one eye to the blue brown shuffle of promising slippers sliding surely hesitant, tottering wheelyplaid, change from the grocery, lighten your load. Ignore red clatter heels twicking swiftly tracking masculine strides. Heh. Brown muffle clop, orange banker’s clip-plick, the fading unsound of averageility, white noise of an afternoon. Write it down, roll it up, linger and play, toss away. Next. Or not.
Turn to watch. See? Maybe. Bilateral invisibility, works both ways. But aware, as the arrangement of furniture, accustomed, eye caught by pattern breaks. Nothing, turn back. Something…
Dewy accusatory jigsaw, brown bread quest. A nip, sip, tug, pull, twirl. Back.
Fiddle the uncalm. A speck, remove. Dirt to pick. Piece by piece, unadorned by accumulation. Pause. Listen.
To read, to walk unhurried, to run, smile, wink. Slipstream atemporal shift, a neighbor; savage flashpoint an enemy, avoid or confront. Which this hour? Which hour? My time, capital m. Dulcid midnight tiptoes; steely, tempered buzzfear hurries home. Eye contact with the stolid burgandy clog, wavering recognition, got a smoke?
Day without walls.