The Market

MJ was surprised by my reaction to the displays of butchered meat. "Haven't you ever walked through Lexington Market?" she asked.

Well of course, but something was different here. Something aesthetic. You see, I was falling for the beauty of the butchery.

I attempt to shirk off the morbidity of that remark now as I type. But to deny the artistry in the display of the splayed ribs, the disembodied tongues, the severed hearts... come now. Never before that Stockholm afternoon -- cold and blustery, full of the chill that drives you into a store for a scarf -- that I really noticed the translucent pink of skinless butchered meat nor the glassy strange stare of the herring. What's more I never had considered the artistry of the display -- this edifice to death arranged as beguiling commercial fancy.

For some reason, being in the commonness of the market gave me paced chance to see out of the corner of my eye the strangeness of celebrated death in its daily and habitual incarnation.

And then we moved out into the city.