That little Filipino shop...
Jul. 21st, 2004 10:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsThe coffee I make at home is so much better than the stuff at work. It's the same brand, and I steep mine in one of those tight-mesh coffee strainers while the office uses a drip maker, but I cannot imagine that makes that much difference.
Someone came through Pike Place Market last night with a broad-tipped paintpen and marked walls, glass storefronts, and newspaper vending machines all along the Eastern wall with swastikas and various racist epithets and slogans, most of them threatening. The alley inside, however, was alive with the morning routine: fish, produce, and flowers were being moved around on knobby-wheeled wagons by rough-looking men and women already bright-eyed and cheerful and ready to take on the day. I picked up a grapefruit from one of the vendors under the covered market, then walked up Post Alley to the bus stop.
There's a little Filipino Imports shop next to the bus stop that I always enjoy looking into. It has a kind of naive earnestness that you just don't find in our oh-so-ironic America. There are statues in the front window of a topless woman and man in different embraces, obviously meant to suggest passion, but my only real thought when seeing them is that they must have come from some X-Files crossbreed, as the artist gave them fingers twice as long as their palms. There's also white plastic statues of Poseidon grabbing a hapless mermaid next to a sitting Indian Buddha with a swastika on his chest-- guess the message that that's not a popular symbol in the West has missed some people. There's also a Chinese Buddha-- the fat, laughing man-- further behind, and behind that a row of fake Egyptian effigies-- buff, jackal-headed men standing next to implausably endowed Isis statuettes.
I kind of miss-- and regret-- the sort of innocence on display. I try not to be nostalgic about it; as always, I believe that we've achieved far more with maturity and wisdom than we have with arbitrary innocence and gatekeepers of our moral worth hounding our every decision. But sometimes the emotion of that little store, the anecdotes that must live in every handcrafted piece of native artwork produced for us silly Westerners, tempts me to indulge in a moment of humane atavism.
Someone came through Pike Place Market last night with a broad-tipped paintpen and marked walls, glass storefronts, and newspaper vending machines all along the Eastern wall with swastikas and various racist epithets and slogans, most of them threatening. The alley inside, however, was alive with the morning routine: fish, produce, and flowers were being moved around on knobby-wheeled wagons by rough-looking men and women already bright-eyed and cheerful and ready to take on the day. I picked up a grapefruit from one of the vendors under the covered market, then walked up Post Alley to the bus stop.
There's a little Filipino Imports shop next to the bus stop that I always enjoy looking into. It has a kind of naive earnestness that you just don't find in our oh-so-ironic America. There are statues in the front window of a topless woman and man in different embraces, obviously meant to suggest passion, but my only real thought when seeing them is that they must have come from some X-Files crossbreed, as the artist gave them fingers twice as long as their palms. There's also white plastic statues of Poseidon grabbing a hapless mermaid next to a sitting Indian Buddha with a swastika on his chest-- guess the message that that's not a popular symbol in the West has missed some people. There's also a Chinese Buddha-- the fat, laughing man-- further behind, and behind that a row of fake Egyptian effigies-- buff, jackal-headed men standing next to implausably endowed Isis statuettes.
I kind of miss-- and regret-- the sort of innocence on display. I try not to be nostalgic about it; as always, I believe that we've achieved far more with maturity and wisdom than we have with arbitrary innocence and gatekeepers of our moral worth hounding our every decision. But sometimes the emotion of that little store, the anecdotes that must live in every handcrafted piece of native artwork produced for us silly Westerners, tempts me to indulge in a moment of humane atavism.
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Better Coffee
Date: 2004-07-22 06:54 am (UTC)Maybe the office is being thrifty when they shouldn't be.
--Gon
Greetings
Date: 2004-07-23 09:11 am (UTC)As for the 'evil' swastika - its origin is much more humble as you probably already now. For example, i have seen a number of coins from Ancient Greece (400 to 500 BC) that have an incuse swastika design on the reverse.
Its a shame that it was corrupted so badly last century.
Re: Greetings
Date: 2004-07-23 11:28 am (UTC)And, obviously, you're welcome to wander about and look for yourself.