a better walk next time.

walked back into that small shop, calling itself a department store. it is one of two places calling themselves that, on this particular mcdonald avenue block. the other one is more of a bodega really. the newly delivered tilde 10lb bags of rice inscribed with their new price $20. this department store here sells mostly clothes and that almost orange gold jewelry that looks as if it were made of the purest, softest version of the metal. i looked at the sale items, fabrics made with varying degrees of personal attention. looked at the prayer carpets folded under a photograph of mecca. not sure what else i looked at or for. a woman with a small brown plastic bag began to pull out fists of gold onto the counter. the owner of the store moved the yellow treasure onto a scale behind him. he then calmly wrote down a number on a piece of paper and showed it to the woman. she looked at him, then just pulled more gold out of the brown plastic bag. i did not feel like i was supposed to be there. across the street three men were watching a politician on a television suspended over the entrance of the store. i slipped past them and towards the back. i butcher was cutting bones with a band saw. a skinned sheepshead, eyeballs still intact, rested on a bloodied block of marble. next to it some other, less recognizable pieces of lamb. some flies seemed to know what they were dealing with. tilde rice was $19 here. that's less than across the street, a dollar more than i paid last week and about $8 more than the same amount cost me just a few months ago. the packaging is different now. perhaps it is rice from a newer harvest? perhaps this is the result of climate change on food prices hardly anyone is talking about these days. i did not feel like i belonged here either. a few blocks closer to home was the polish bodega. the old owner, marysienka (little mary) left because, as she once mentioned, of the worse and worse business recently. "polish workers used to come here when the dollar was stronger. they would find employment at the construction of villas mostly for sephardic jews. (the words she used were less specific,) now with the dollar weaker and weaker, it seemed that the work looked more attractive in europe. london and dublin were closer to home. and the work was in most cases more legal." the new owner greeted me with a non hesitant "dzien dobry". i looked at some of the products, almost bought the "mother in law mustard"... but i did not. i would come back. maybe. is this even worth mentioning? the whole afternoon succeeded in pulling me into a darker and darker place. i walked home, on church, walked home, across ocean parkway, taking the more dangerous crossing, the one where the one armed guy in fatigues, who looks like a vietnam veteran, often begs drivers arriving from manhattan for money. (at least on evenings when he is not riding his bike, miraculously healed of his amputation, on sidewalks around here.) i was just briefly surprised when he almost ran me over the other day. need to take a better walk next time...