Transcendence (Applause)

The newspapers are ecstatic; they praise the market in each location, marveling at the eclectic quality of it, and at its ingenuity. The articles are short and glowing, and Mr.Marshall savours each one. Half of the articles express that many market-goers wish the market had more regular hours; the other half declares that that is part of its charm. One paper in Thailand/Wales devotes an entire page to a lengthy review that details the journalist’s own visit to the market. It is also written with pieces from letters sent to the editor in which ardent market-goers write about their own experiences.

The first step within circle of the market is a transition into a cacophony of sound and smell. Cardamom and oranges and smells too exotic to place, and languages too numerous to depict one specifically.

It s no myriad of hastily erected shacks hazarding splinters and rusty nails. Nothing so mundane or ugly.

The market consists of a series of avenues, intersecting at precarious angles, like a many-pointed star.

The wonders are never ending, and one colourful path leads to another. A concentric spectrum of wares and spectacles.

Stalls with wares from opposite ends of the world stand beside one another. A vendor selling textiles from Tabriz and Morocco weaves and converses with a lady from a stall that sells English tea. He is silent which she prepared two bowls of tea in a calming tea ceremony, mint for him, and green matcha for herself.

I came across a large stall festooned with dolls, like a shop window. Numerous porcelain faces, uncountable pairs of glass eyes. The petit Asian woman, with a long twist of black hair and swan-black eyes is dressed in a flamingo pink gown embroidered with chrysanthemums. A doll, one of her own creations, wears a similar gown, and sits on a shelf in the back of the stall. The woman seems constantly at work, carnation-red rimmed eyes cast down at the doll in her hands. She is tailoring the kimono, or mixing rosebud pink paint for the doll’s lips.

In some concourses the sky is blotted out by dozens upon dozens of wind-worried textiles, in carmine and emerald and cobalt blue. They flutter like tropical birds and drape the world in colour.

Adjacent from a stall redolent with Turkish lanterns and racked with slippers with curling toes is a French designer, pulling dressed frothy with tulle and lace from polishes wooden chests.

And there are wonders the like of which have never been seen before.

A man in a suit the colour of bronze October light stands beside his stall, beneath a sign that reads Clockwork Zoo. Miniatures in brass and copper, silver and electrum. They hum as they move, with the noise of many cogs and gears whirling together, not the clicks of common windup toys. Their movements are not disjointed and jerky, but fluid and silky. Their eyes, pieces of coloured glass, flash as they move, and many customers insist that they are real. The silver wolf hunches its shoulders as it prowls, in one smooth movement beginning at its shoulders, ending at its tail. The ivory swan’s wings ripple as they flap.

Upon conversing with one of the vendors I discovered that, while they are friendly and inviting, they hardly speak. They speak only when spoken to and answer only questions relating to their work. I came across only a few vendors or performers who spoke more regularly.

A magician performs in one of the largest avenues, in the centre of the crowds. But he is no ordinary street magician. He wears no coat or top hat, no flashy cape, and carries no cane or birdcage. Instead he wears a vest, only, open, and some of the market-goers find it scandalous, but it does not seem to matter to them soon. Ordinary legerdemain involves sleight of hand, misdirection, but his performance is open, stage-less, sans mechanisms or false bottoms or deception. And each act melds seamlessly together.

In another busy corner of the market, a young lady stands by a stand full of animals, still birds, motionless vermin, reptiles seemingly freshly dead. Beneath her hands they flutter to life, rise and breath and peer at the crowd. She bows to thunderous applause.

The market square is a carnival itself. A snake charmer sits in a cushioned corner and permeates the air with hypnotic melodies, children run barefoot around the vendors who haggle in a multitude of languages. Arabic, Greek, French, and others that I did not recognize, all spoken within meters of another.

In the late hours the market is lit with a complex network of lanterns strung across the tops of stalls, and throughout the open hours of the night, they shift in hue from amber to silver to gold.

The marketplace transcends the imaginable. It is a place from a dream, a piece of the bazaar embedded in the filigree of the commonality of the world.

Mr.Marshall smiles as he sets the article aside and lights a cigar. The article is one of many that praise the market; it is a success, resplendent. Inchoate ideas halted in their process while the market was up and coming, become prominent in Mr.Marshall’s mind. The market is growing.

Text by Lucie MacAulay