Monthly Archives: September 2015

The smell is what draws one to the sprawling epicenter of people and things we call markets. The sounds, the noise, and sometimes a combination of the two, and yes, they too are separate things. The sites, or more accurately, the colors, and of course, the shades. Hues, contrasts, whatever happens to be coming through the fence, the blinds, and at the right moment, shadows. Bright here, mellow there, ambiguous here, starkly sharp there.

As gathering places go, what draws locals to markets also draws passersby. The people. And what spins around the people.

And how funny it is, that locals and passersby alike, how we all glance up the aisles, down the lines, pull up chairs, slurp, chat, negotiate, laugh. Mesmerize. And be mesmerized. Perhaps this is the sole place where you and I are not so different, not so distant. Proximity by physics, but also in mind, is so often taken for granted.

Flies the size of thumbnails, on or around potentially lukewarm poultry, the nagging reminders of pocket thieves, and even the gentleman pissed off at photography-with-no-purchase, it all becomes a welcome banner. In a town flooded with trekkers catching wind before heading off to grander ruins, the mercado perhaps is one place to truly live Cusco.

While travel is generally to experience something out of the norm, as far away from the everyday as possible, the irony is that the best travel often lures you towards the norm and everyday of someone else. Away from one and towards another, and yet, from the contrasts, the sense of familiarity is what strangely lasts in the passerby’s psyche.

The author and passerby Nikos Kazantzakis once said, “I surrender myself to everything. I love, I feel pain, I struggle. The world seems to me wider than the mind, my heart a dark and almighty mystery.”

The fray of the market calls fur such surrendering, almost forcefully widening one’s mind, and the smell, the sounds, the noise, the sites, the colors, and the shades, all sink into one’s heart to form an almighty mystery. For a brief moment, one travels to and from the label of passerby to just another being – loving, feeling, struggling. As a place for trading, the most significant trade turns out to be that of the mind and sentiment, where full immersion allows one to be something completely different and yet the same. The vaguely familiar.

Salad bowls are like vanishing unicorns. Mixing bowls do not exist. To argue or to search for one would be dumping everything from the mercado (goat testicles and all) into a blender and forcing the consequence down one’s throat. Instead, what really happens is more like a dream, or that stage between sleep and consciousness. Passersby become locals, but are still passing by, but are still there, fully there.

It makes no sense, but in the end, travel makes no sense. It does not have to. What remains is one’s self, no longer of the past, a completely new being, back from the dream, now fully awake.

Back from the mercado.
