pike's place market (memoir snippet - july, 2023)

 It's July, I haven't been laid off from my job yet, and it is an unseasonably warm day in Seattle, Washington. I'm still wearing long pants - I was envisioning a moody, noir film city shrouded in fog, a view my over-detailed daydreaming of Twin Peaks doesn't do anything to soothe. We're supposed to visit the real deal later this week, a lovely little town with the diner still intact. But that's for when we leave the city, and my mom still has meetings to go to, so I am left to fantasize of cherry pie as my dad, my sister and I step out of the hotel and stroll down towards the waterfront, lattes in hand and the salty air in our noses. Seattle is nothing if not in love with coffee - even the monolith of caffeine addictions, Starbucks, was founded here - and everyone has an espresso machine at the least. I've already had at least three types of lavender mocha, and each sip motivates me as we wander off to find the Pike's Place Market.

My mom has told me little, only that it's something I'd love. That it is beautiful and odd, and to make sure my purse is zipped up because the busy air makes it easy to swipe a wallet or phone left unguarded. 

I turn the corner, the market envelops me fully, and I am hypnotized. 

Beautiful and odd is more than true - I am struck with something like a boardwalk, something like a funhouse, and something like my vision of a faerie festival. Lively violin and accordion tunes fill the air, and homemade jewelry, strung up puppets, banners worn and new dance in stalls, the vendors waving, yelling for anyone to stop and look. There are giant, icy pitchers of apple cider, fresh peaches and plums and baskets of cherries. Peonies blossom, pink and yellow and white, each as big as my fist. From deeper in the painted, movie picture labyrinth, I hear a rhythmic yelling, a song. A group of men following a melody in unison as they chop and sell fresh fish, no doubt caught from the waterfront visible outside. Something stirs in my mind, my heart, like a wish granted. This is real. I can live in a world like this. 

I step inside. The halls are long and winding, carnival lights glowing overhead, my shoes squeaking on gleaming, little hexagonal tiles reminiscent of an old spa's. I glance over my shoulder - my family are still there, I'm not trying to get physically lost - and delve deeper, the sounds taking on echoes, overwhelming but pleasantly so. I linger to watch two people, the musicians behind the playful instrumental of earlier. They're wearing colorful layers, scarves in red and purple and green that remind me of theater curtains in shade, and over-the-head rubber cat masks. A sign with a CashApp QR code sits in front of them, and I wonder if they're having fun. I don't have the app, but I drop a handful of change in the calico cat's violin case as we pass by. 

For lunch, we sit in a repurposed train car, cozied in between two other shops like an unlikely nook, and I shovel what I think is saffron rice into my mouth. It's the best thing I've ever tasted. I am alive, and the world has never had so much color before. I think I'll be seeing a lot of it from now on.

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