Street Vendors Quotes

Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell leaving is not enough; you must stay gone. train your heart like a dog. change the locks even on the house he’s never visited. you lucky, lucky girl. you have an apartment just your size. a bathtub full of tea. a heart the size of Arizona, but not nearly so arid. don’t wish away your cracked past, your crooked toes, your problems are papier mache puppets you made or bought because the vendor at the market was so compelling you just had to have them. you had to have him. and you did. and now you pull down the bridge between your houses, you make him call before he visits, you take a lover for granted, you take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic. make the first bottle you consume in this place a relic. place it on whatever altar you fashion with a knife and five cranberries. don’t lose too much weight. stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge. and you are not stupid. you loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand. heart like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas. heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street.

For Jenn At 12 years old I started bleeding with the moon and beating up boys who dreamed of becoming astronauts. I fought with my knuckles white as stars, and left bruises the shape of Salem. There are things we know by heart, and things we don't. At 13 my friend Jen tried to teach me how to blow rings of smoke. I'd watch the nicotine rising from her lips like halos, but I could never make dying beautiful. The sky didn't fill with colors the night I convinced myself veins are kite strings you can only cut free. I suppose I love this life, in spite of my clenched fist. I open my palm and my lifelines look like branches from an Aspen tree, and there are songbirds perched on the tips of my fingers, and I wonder if Beethoven held his breath the first time his fingers touched the keys the same way a soldier holds his breath the first time his finger clicks the trigger. We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe. But my lungs remember the day my mother took my hand and placed it on her belly and told me the symphony beneath was my baby sister's heartbeat. And I knew life would tremble like the first tear on a prison guard's hardened cheek, like a prayer on a dying man's lips, like a vet holding a full bottle of whisky like an empty gun in a war zone… just take me just take me Sometimes the scales themselves weigh far too much, the heaviness of forever balancing blue sky with red blood. We were all born on days when too many people died in terrible ways, but you still have to call it a birthday. You still have to fall for the prettiest girl on the playground at recess and hope she knows you can hit a baseball further than any boy in the whole third grade and I've been running for home through the windpipe of a man who sings while his hands playing washboard with a spoon on a street corner in New Orleans where every boarded up window is still painted with the words We're Coming Back like a promise to the ocean that we will always keep moving towards the music, the way Basquait slept in a cardboard box to be closer to the rain. Beauty, catch me on your tongue. Thunder, clap us open. The pupils in our eyes were not born to hide beneath their desks. Tonight lay us down to rest in the Arizona desert, then wake us washing the feet of pregnant women who climbed across the border with their bellies aimed towards the sun. I know a thousand things louder than a soldier's gun. I know the heartbeat of his mother. Don't cover your ears, Love. Don't cover your ears, Life. There is a boy writing poems in Central Park and as he writes he moves and his bones become the bars of Mandela's jail cell stretching apart, and there are men playing chess in the December cold who can't tell if the breath rising from the board is their opponents or their own, and there's a woman on the stairwell of the subway swearing she can hear Niagara Falls from her rooftop in Brooklyn, and I'm remembering how Niagara Falls is a city overrun with strip malls and traffic and vendors and one incredibly brave river that makes it all worth it. Ya'll, I know this world is far from perfect. I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon. I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic. But every ocean has a shoreline and every shoreline has a tide that is constantly returning to wake the songbirds in our hands, to wake the music in our bones, to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that brave river that has to run through the center of our hearts to find its way home.

Karou was mysterious. She had no apparent family, she never talked about herself, and she was expert at evading questions--for all that her friends knew of her background, she might have sprung whole from the head of Zeus. And she was endlessly surprising. Her pockets were always spilling out curious things: ancient bronze coins, teeth, tiny jade tigers no bigger than her thumbnail. She might reveal, while haggling for sunglasses with an African street vendor, that she spoke fluent Yoruba. Once, Kaz had undressed her to discover a knife hidden in her boot. There was the matter of her being impossible to scare and, of course, there were the scars on her abdomen: three shiny divots that could only have been made by bullets.

Ish #303 "It's a street food vendor! Stop asking for the health score rating.

Multiple sets of golden eyes lit up in anticipation. Fried fish, in the style of Mospheiran street vendors, was his aishid’s favorite of the new flavors they’d discovered on the island.

He went among vendors and beggars and wild street preachers haranguing a lost world with vigor unknown to the sane. Suttree admired them with their hot eyes and dogeared bibles, God's barkers gone forth into the world like the prophets of old.

Behind the desk was nothing but view-the whole city flung out in front of us the way street vendors fling out their towels packed with cheap, glittery watches and belts. That's how New York looked: like gorgeous, easy thing to have, even for me.

Witnessing all of those hardworking female street vendors in Vietnam also made me understand why my mom felt so passionate about me and my sisters working. While we were in Vietnam together, she explained that the country had a history of always being in wartime, so women were expected to rise to the occasion of making money for the family. Vietnamese women were always ready to take over roles traditionally filled by men, Like A League of Their Own (but where everyone is Marla Hooch). I also understood why my mom wasn't into processing her feelings, and how she was taught to just get over tragedy. To survive, she had to believe things like depression and allergies were a choice. In a culture entrenched in wartime, those who chose to be unhappy or to refuse gluten didn't last long.

Tragedy happens - "tragic mistakes" happen - when men act according to their flawed natures, in fulfillment of their preordained destinies. The tragedy of the four killers of Amadou Diallo is that their deeds were made possible by their general preconceptions about black people and poor neighborhoods; by a theory of policing that encourages them to be rigid and punitive toward petty offenders; and by a social context in which the possession and use of firearms is so normative as to be almost beyond discussion. The tragedy of the street vendor Amadou Diallo is that he came as an innocent to the slaughter, made vulnerable by poverty and by the color of his skin. And the tragedy of America is that a nation which sees itself as leading the world toward a global future in which the American values of freedom and justice will be available for everyone fails so frequently and so badly to guarantee that freedom and that justice for so many people within its own frontiers.

FRIDA KAHLO TO MARTY MCCONNELL leaving is not enough; you must stay gone. train your heart like a dog. change the locks even on the house he’s never visited. you lucky, lucky girl. you have an apartment just your size. a bathtub full of tea. a heart the size of Arizona, but not nearly so arid. don’t wish away your cracked past, your crooked toes, your problems are papier mache puppets you made or bought because the vendor at the market was so compelling you just had to have them. you had to have him. and you did. and now you pull down the bridge between your houses, you make him call before he visits, you take a lover for granted, you take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic. make the first bottle you consume in this place a relic. place it on whatever altar you fashion with a knife and five cranberries. don’t lose too much weight. stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge. and you are not stupid. you loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand. heart like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas. heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street.

Now let me tell you something. I have seen a thousand sunsets and sunrises, on land where it floods forest and mountains with honey coloured light, at sea where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multicoloured nest of cloud, slipping in and out of the vast ocean. I have seen a thousand moons: harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips, new moons like baby swans’ feathers. I have seen seas as smooth as if painted, coloured like shot silk or blue as a kingfisher or transparent as glass or black and crumpled with foam, moving ponderously and murderously. I have felt winds straight from the South Pole, bleak and wailing like a lost child; winds as tender and warm as a lover’s breath; winds that carried the astringent smell of salt and the death of seaweeds; winds that carried the moist rich smell of a forest floor, the smell of a million flowers. Fierce winds that churned and moved the sea like yeast, or winds that made the waters lap at the shore like a kitten. I have known silence: the cold, earthy silence at the bottom of a newly dug well; the implacable stony silence of a deep cave; the hot, drugged midday silence when everything is hypnotised and stilled into silence by the eye of the sun; the silence when great music ends. I have heard summer cicadas cry so that the sound seems stitched into your bones. I have heard tree frogs in an orchestration as complicated as Bach singing in a forest lit by a million emerald fireflies. I have heard the Keas calling over grey glaciers that groaned to themselves like old people as they inched their way to the sea. I have heard the hoarse street vendor cries of the mating Fur seals as they sang to their sleek golden wives, the crisp staccato admonishment of the Rattlesnake, the cobweb squeak of the Bat and the belling roar of the Red deer knee-deep in purple heather. I have heard Wolves baying at a winter’s moon, Red howlers making the forest vibrate with their roaring cries. I have heard the squeak, purr and grunt of a hundred multi-coloured reef fishes. I have seen hummingbirds flashing like opals round a tree of scarlet blooms, humming like a top. I have seen flying fish, skittering like quicksilver across the blue waves, drawing silver lines on the surface with their tails. I have seen Spoonbills flying home to roost like a scarlet banner across the sky. I have seen Whales, black as tar, cushioned on a cornflower blue sea, creating a Versailles of fountain with their breath. I have watched butterflies emerge and sit, trembling, while the sun irons their wings smooth. I have watched Tigers, like flames, mating in the long grass. I have been dive-bombed by an angry Raven, black and glossy as the Devil’s hoof. I have lain in water warm as milk, soft as silk, while around me played a host of Dolphins. I have met a thousand animals and seen a thousand wonderful things. But— All this I did without you. This was my loss. All this I want to do with you. This will be my gain. All this I would gladly have forgone for the sake of one minute of your company, for your laugh, your voice, your eyes, hair, lips, body, and above all for your sweet, ever-surprising mind which is an enchanting quarry in which it is my privilege to delve.

The president, the secretary of state, the businessman, the preacher, the vendor, the spies, the clients and managers—all walking around Wall Street like chickens with their heads cut off—rushing to escape bankruptcy—plotting to melt down the Statue of Liberty—to press more copper pennies—to breed more headless chickens—to put more feathers in their caps—medals, diplomas, stock certificates, honorary doctorates—eggs and eggs of headless chickens—multitaskers—system hackers—who never know where they’re heading--northward, backward, eastward, forward, and never homeward—(where is home)—home is in the head—(but the head is cut off)—and the nest is full of banking forms and Easter eggs with coins inside. Beheaded chickens, how do you breed chickens with their heads cut off? By teaching them how to bankrupt creativity.

It is necessary for the oppressors to approach the people in order, via subjugation, to keep them passive. This approximation, however, does not involve being with the people, or require true communication. It is accomplished by the oppressors' depositing myths indispensable to the preservation of the status quo: for example, the myth that the oppressive order is a "free society"; the myth that all persons are free to work where they wish, that if they don't like their boss they can leave him and look for another job; the myth that this order respects human rights and is therefore worthy of esteem; the myth that anyone who is industrious can become an entrepreneur--worse yet, the myth that the street vendor is as much an entrepreneur as the owner of a large factory; the myth of the universal right of education, when of all the Brazilian children who enter primary schools only a tiny fraction ever reach the university; the myth of the equality of all individuals, when the question: "Do you know who you're talking to?" is still current among us; the myth of the heroism of the oppressor classes as defenders of "Western Christian civilization" against "materialist barbarism"; the myth of the charity and generosity of the elites, when what they really do as a class is to foster selective "good deeds" (subsequently elaborated into the myth of "disinterested aid," which on the international level was severely criticized by Pope John XXIII); the myth that the dominant elites, "recognizing their duties," promote the advancement of the people, so that the people, in a gesture of gratitude, should accept the words of the elites and be conformed to them; the myth of private property as fundamental to personal human development (so long as oppressors are the only true human beings); the myth of the industriousness of the oppressors and the laziness and dishonesty of the oppressed as well as the myth of the natural inferiority of the latter and the superiority of the former.

On the day I lose my phone, I decide to live à la Ladakh: write a letter on paper, go to the post office, wait for his reply for a long time, appreciate a meal a day and a few clothes, be grateful for having been born as a human, read the Tibetan Book of the Dead, buy vegetables from an old street vendor, and save a bee’s life. On the day I lose my wallet, I decide to live à la Ladakh: plant a seed, wait for a long time, and share the fruit with a worm.

The city was a real city, shifty and sexual. I was lightly jostled by small herds of flushed young sailors looking for action on Forty-Second Street, with it rows of x-rated movie houses, brassy women, glittering souvenir shops, and hot-dog vendors. I wandered through Kino parlors and peered through the windows of the magnificent sprawling Grant’s Raw Bar filled with men in black coats scooping up piles of fresh oysters. The skyscrapers were beautiful. They did not seem like mere corporate shells. They were monuments to the arrogant yet philanthropic spirit of America. The character of each quadrant was invigorating and one felt the flux of its history. The old world and the emerging one served up in the brick and mortar of the artisan and the architects. I walked for hours from park to park. In Washington Square, one could still feel the characters of Henry James and the presence of the author himself … This open atmosphere was something I had not experienced, simple freedom that did not seem oppressive to anyone.

leaving is not enough; you must stay gone. train your heart like a dog. change the locks even on the house he’s never visited. you lucky, lucky girl. you have an apartment just your size. a bathtub full of tea. a heart the size of Arizona, but not nearly so arid. don’t wish away your cracked past, your crooked toes, your problems are papier mache puppets you made or bought because the vendor at the market was so compelling you just had to have them. you had to have him. and you did. and now you pull down the bridge between your houses, you make him call before he visits, you take a lover for granted, you take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic. make the first bottle you consume in this place a relic. place it on whatever altar you fashion with a knife and five cranberries. don’t lose too much weight. stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge. and you are not stupid. you loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand. heart like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas. heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street.

It was autumn, the season of pomegranate and quince. The scent of roasted nuts and barbecued corn from the street vendors, of mud-packed alleyways, gasoline fumes, and concrete roads—I hadn’t known, until I encountered them again, how much I’d missed the city.

He listened to the hooting of many metal horns, squealing of brakes, the calls of vendors selling red-purple bananas and jungle oranges in their stalls. Colonel Freeleigh's feet began to move, hanging from the edge of his wheel chair, making the motions of a man walking. His eyes squeezed tight. He gave a series of immense sniffs, as if to gain the odors of meats hung on iron hooks in sunshine, cloaked with flies like a mantle of raisins; the smell of stone alleys wet with morning rain. He could feel the sun bum his spiny-bearded cheek, and he was twenty-five years old again, walking, walking, looking, smiling, happy to be alive, very much alert, drinking in colors and smells.

You could always tell when a storm was coming, because the street vendors would start selling their overpriced umbrellas and shout at pedestrians to buy them. It was an aggressive tactic, preying on a customer’s immediate need for shelter. If that wasn’t a metaphor for the human condition, then I didn’t know what was.

Look closer at this street corner: The sun is setting. The vendor at the newspaper stand packs up the dailies and puts away the cartons of eggs. Students with laptops in their arms shuffle out of the cha chaan teng. Elderly couples and their poodles take a stroll by the pier. You can still hear the uproar of the crowds that once gathered on the steep slopes for film screenings, festivals, protests. The florists at the wet market put away the last lilies. The last tram slots itself into the station. And then the scene dissolves again. Maybe you can’t save this place; maybe it isn’t even worth saving. But for a moment, there was a sliver of what this city could have become. And that is why we’re still here.

I like to sell this stuff when the rest of the vendors have long since gone home, when the streets are deserted and a cold rind of moon floats over the canyons of the city.

Should a woman keep her pants on in the streets or not? Shall she remove them, say, at the moment of going to church, for a more intimate reminder of her sexuality in relation to God? What difference does it make if that woman is a lemon vendor and sells you lemons in the streets without using underwear? Moreover, what difference would it make if she sits down to write theology without underwear? The Argentinian woman theologian and the lemon vendors may have some things in common and others not. In common, they have centuries of patriarchal oppression, in the Latin American mixture of clericalism, militarism and the authoritarianism of decency, that is, the sexual organisation of the public and private spaces of society. However,

In the end, all I remember is that while my lawyer went on talking, I could hear through the expanse of chambers and courtrooms an ice cream vendor blowing his tin trumpet out in the street. I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn’t mine anymore, but one in which I’d found the simplest and most lasting joys: the smells of summer, the part of town I loved, a certain evening sky, Marie’s dresses and the way she laughed. The utter pointlessness of whatever I was doing there seized me by the throat, and all I wanted was to get it over with and get back to my cell and sleep.

As he met now with each sales director, J.T. would begin by grilling him with a standard set of questions: You losing any of your regulars? (In other words, customers.) Anybody complaining? (About the quality of the crack.) You heard of people leaving you for others? (Customers buying crack from other dealers.) Anybody watching you? (The police or tenant leaders.) Any new hustlers been hanging around? (Homeless people or street vendors.) You seen any niggers come around? (Enemy gangs.)

In Whitman’s writings in and about New Orleans, the kind of man Whitman was attracted to can be found scattered over almost every page, be they oyster vendors, omnibus drivers, or street toughs. Their type struck Whitman's fancy — personally and politically.

There are colors of beauty in Madrid, but also colors of hardship. Ghosts of war walk the streets in Spain. Daniel passes blind lottery vendors, citizens missing limbs, young people using canes. Should he look directly at them and acknowledge their sacrifice or look away and honor their dignity?

and Anna could smell sushi, baked bread, and frying hot dogs. She could even catch the faint tang of Indian spices- not the kinds of spices she was used to, of course, the very specific kind in pandhi curry or masala crab, but then she had never come across those flavors outside the small, beautiful corner of India that her mother had once called home. That said, this place did smell yummy. There was food everywhere she looked: street vendors, bakeries, cafés, take-out places, you name it. Hungry Heart Row, that's what this neighborhood was called, and it seemed its residents had taken that very seriously.

Every day that I’m home, I sit close enough to the door to hear the shuffle of footsteps just outside it. I sit there, reading or layering ink on a form, and wait. Most times, it’s just the sound of a vendor or a neighbor walking down the street. But sometimes, it’s what I was hoping for. A letter from you.

My main concern while in New York wasn't becoming a hot shot. I was more concerned with staying alive, and that took all the pleasure out of the experience. I didn't know where to find a grocery store so I subsisted on hot dogs, peanuts and whatever else I could buy from a street vendor. I didn't know how to hail a cab (apparently there's an art to it). I stood on the edge of the sidewalk and waved my arms around but no one stopped, so I limited my entire universe to however far I could walk and I never walked too far because I was afraid I'd get lost and never find my way back home again. Perhaps that's why there are so many homeless people in New York; maybe they're not really lost, maybe some of them have homes but they just don't know how to get there.

Small white clouds floated in the blue sky above, and on the street a flute vendor was playing the flute - a sharp, soft, sinuous, Oriental tune that twisted and turned in the ear like embroidery, like a picture of a dream in a novel, a trail of white mist coming out from under the bed curtain and unfurling all sorts of images, slowly uncoiling like a lazy snake, till finally the drowsiness is just too great, and even the dream falls asleep.

The heat of the day had long since retreated into the desert, and the city, which had drowsed through the hot afternoon, was finally coming alive. The streets filled with people drinking tea and gossiping, laughing, and visiting friends. Old men played chatrang on boards set up outside cafes; children stayed up long past their bedtimes playing their own games on the sidewalks. Men and women bought rose-flavored ices and trinkets from nighttime vendors.

The markets of my memory were city markets, London markets, crammed into narrow streets or cobbled squares, with hoarse-voiced vendors hawking their wares and all around me the relentless press of people, people everywhere. It was a pleasant change to see the bright-striped awnings gaily ringing around the weathered market cross, and the sunlight beating cheerfully down upon the market square. There were crowds here too, to be sure, but these were friendly country folk, their voices clear and plain, with honest faces scrubbed red by the wind and weather. "What do you think?" Rachel asked me. I could only gape, wide-eyed, like an entranced child, and she laughed her lovely musical laugh, grabbing my hand to lead me down into the thick of the crowd. We were jostled and bumped, but I found I did not mind it, and to my amazement I heard myself laughing as the final shreds of oppression fell away from me. The breeze lifted my hair and the sun warmed my face, and I felt suddenly, gloriously alive.

A living metaphor for God, sexuality and the struggle in the streets of Buenos Aires comes from the images of lemons vendors. A materialist-based theology finds in them a starting point from which ideology, theology and sexuality can be rewritten from the margins of society, the church and systematic theologies. Our point of departure is the understanding that every theology implies a conscious or unconscious sexual and political praxis, based on reflections and actions developed from certain accepted codifications. These

OK, there’s a guy in a suit standing at the window. This is the fourth time I’ve seen him in three days. And I will promise you one thing. If you look now, he won’t be there.” I turned around. A man in a suit disappeared down the sidewalk. “What did I say?” she said. “Are you telling me you’re being followed?” “It’s unclear.” Fishing vests, sleeping in public, antipsychotic medication, and now men following her? When Bee was two, she developed a strange attachment to a novelty book Bernadette and I had bought years ago from a street vendor in Rome. ROME Past and Present A Guide To the Monumental Centre of Ancient Rome With Reconstructions of the Monuments It has photographs of present-day ruins, with overlays of how they looked in their heyday. Bee would sit in her hospital bed, hooked up to her monitors, and flip back and forth among the images. The book had a puffy red plastic cover that she’d chew on. I realized I was now looking at Bernadette Past and Present. There was a terrifying chasm between the woman I fell in love with and the ungovernable one sitting across from me.

Bangkok between the hours of five and six in the morning was a marvel to behold. Golden spires and glass skyscrapers appeared as if by magic as the city shed its cloak of darkness, rising like stalagmites from a cave floor. Signs of life slowly materialized across the city as the last of the stars phased out of the sky. Industrious vendors hauled a dizzying array of food and wares in preparation for the day ahead, while Buddhist monks in saffron robes processed through the streets dispensing blessings in exchange for alms. The sight was captivating enough to move even the most jaded observer.

Clark Air base in Angeles City is a hub of commerce. The streets teem with industrious Filipinos hustling to make a living. Rusty cars and trucks clog narrow streets and honk their horns with abandon. Jeepneys ferry passengers around town for only a few pesos and serve as public transportation. The jeepney is the official vehicle of the Philippines. Jeepneys are long, open-sided jeeps and have bench seats for passengers. The best jeepneys are very ornate, their hoods festooned with a multitude of fancy chrome horses and ornaments, multihued streamers, and hand-operated rubber-bulb horns. Safety standards are third-world-relaxed in the PI, and jeepney drivers casually smoke cigarettes while they sit with plastic containers of gasoline nestled between their feet. The clear plastic jugs have a tube that connects to the engine and serves as the jeepney’s improvised gas tank, making it easier for the driver to monitor and conserve fuel. Jeepneys are not the only transportation available. Small, sidecar-equipped motorcycles called tricycles, also serve as cheap taxis, crowding the streets near popular establishments. The alleys are lined with side-by-side food stalls, and street vendors occupy every corner.

Whatever fear he’d instilled in people on the streets was of no consequence inside the market, packed with ramshackle stalls and vendors and food stands, smoke drifting throughout, the tang of blood and spark of magic acrid in his nostrils. And above it all, against the far wall of the enormous space, was a towering mosaic, the tiles taken from an ancient temple in Pangera, restored and re-created here in loving detail, despite its gruesome depiction: cloaked and hooded death, the skeleton’s face grinning out from the cowl, a scythe in one hand and an hourglass in the other. Above its head, words had been crafted in the Republic’s most ancient language: Memento Mori.

He slowly raised at her the long sharp blade he had kept in his pocket, its edge gleaming ominously in the candlelight. It was not at all an ordinary weapon; while choosing it from a mysteriously smiling street-vendor, he picked the best with precision, the sharpest one made of Babbitt-metal. Before deciding, he had even tested its efficiency, checking its deadly precision first by slicing effortlessly through a piece of paper, a smooth and exact cut, then, it cleaved a ripe tomato in one swift motion, showing its stabbed inner fluid, and finally he tested it on a piece of dry wood, with a single stroke, the wood splintered cleanly, a testament to the blade’s lethality. She was the next.

The inversion of values so essential to the imperial project is evident in a story like Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Naboth’, the tale of an Indian hawker or street-vendor who takes advantage of a colonial Englishman’s kindness to gradually appropriate more and more of the latter’s land and build himself a hut there. In the end, of course, the Englishman throws out the Indian (from what is, after all, Indian soil!) and the story ends with the lone narrator’s triumphalism over the ungrateful Indian: ‘Naboth is gone now, and his hut is ploughed into its native mud with sweetmeats instead of salt for a sign that the place is accursed. I have built a summer house to overlook the end of the garden, and it is as a fort on my frontier where I guard my Empire.

After Mrs. Ma hurried off, Charlie tested the shaved ice and glanced at the spirits drifting into Hungry Heart Row. They'd been pouring in since dawn, wandering through the stalls that each participating restaurant had set up, clustering around a fragrant Crock-Pot of ash-e-reshte and platters full of pumpkin tamales. Across the street, Lila from the local pastelería was unboxing dozens of conchas and novias, each one more brightly colored than the last. Charlie got to work setting out the fixings. Assembling a bowl of shaved ice was a lot like making an ice cream sundae. Just replace the ice cream with slivers of ice and cover them with toppings that take on a special Asian flair- grass jelly, chunks of mango or sliced strawberries, and Waipo's mung beans in syrup.

The day was sunny, fine for walking, brisk, and getting brisker—and in fact, as I cut a diagonal through a little plaza somewhere above Fortieth Street, the last autumn leaves leapt up from the pavement and swirled around our heads, and a sudden misty quality in the atmosphere above seemed to solidify into a ceiling both dark and luminous, and the passersby hunched into their collars, and two minutes later the gusts had settled into a wind, not hard, but steady and cold, and my hands dove into my coat pockets. A bit of rain speckled the pavement. Random snowflakes spiraled in the air. All around me, people seemed to be evacuating the scene, while across the square a vendor shouted that he was closing his cart and you could have his wares for practically nothing, and for no reason I could have named I bought two of his rat-dogs with everything and a cup of doubtful coffee and then learned the reason—they were wonderful. I nearly ate the napkin. New York!

Unlike the rain-slicked streets of Oblakgrad, Dírorth was a stir of activity. The streets were lined with vendors selling greasy meat pies to passersby. The clogging crowd of Humans cramped together as they pushed past one another, rushing from one errand to the next. The shouting of a thousand voices melted together into a perpetual buzz, like a great swarm of bees hovering over the street. And yet a strange silence hung over the city. It filled in the background, inhabiting dark corners where the din of the crowd could not squelch it. It had a strange omnipresence, like something that you are subconsciously aware of, but do not consciously see with your eyes. It was a silence ignored, hidden by the façade of hectic traffic. You wouldn’t really notice it, not unless you were looking for it. Not unless you actually stopped to listen. If the city folk had stopped, frozen, if they had stilled themselves for a moment, the silence would have gaped wide open like a dark, hungry maw. But they ignored it. For the past century, they had covered that silence with the commotion of everyday life, refusing to let it control them. To define them. They did not hear it. They would not hear it. I myself did not hear it for years and years, not until the day that I actually stopped to listen. Can you hear it, now? Can you hear it in the words your reading, the words I say to you? Listen. Hear its empty resonance across the cobbles. Feel it in the dust beneath Notak’s boot, damp with last night’s rain. Smell it on the ragged clothes of the peasants, hidden in the folds of dirty fabric. See it in their eyes, latent beneath the gloss of the everyday. Taste it in the clamor of the streets, clamor born out of a unconscious urge to fill the quiet with something, anything to drive it away, anything to stave off the silence that reeked with defeat. It was the echo of a hundred years of slavery. It was the song of a people, waiting for God.

How did you convince her to remarry you?” Tomas asked curiously, drawing Radcliffe from his thoughts. Making a face, he admitted, “I had to draw up a contract stating that I would never again condescend to her. That I would discuss business with her on a daily basis were she interested, and…” “And?” He sighed unhappily. “And that I would take her to my club dressed as a man.” Tomas gave a start. “What?” “Shh,” Radcliffe cautioned, glancing nervously around to be sure that they had not been overheard. No one seemed to be paying attention to them. Most of the guests were casting expectant glances toward the back of the church, hoping to spot the brides who should have been there by now. Glancing back to Tomas, he nodded. “She was quite adamant about seeing the club. It seems she was jealous of Beth’s getting with those ‘hallowed halls’-her words, not mine-and she was determined to see inside for herself.” “Have you taken her there yet?” “Nay, nay. I managed to put her off for quite some time, and then by the time she lost her patience with my stalling, she was with child and did not think the smoky atmosphere would be good for the baby. I am hoping by the time it is born and she is up and about again, she will have forgotten-“ A faint shriek from outside the church made him pause and stiffen in alarm. “That sounded like Charlie.” Turning, he hurried toward the back of the church with Tomas on his heel. Crashing through the church doors, they both froze at the top of the steps and gaped at the spectacle taking place on the street below. Charlie and Beth, in all their wedding finery, were in the midst of attacking what appeared to be a street vendor. Flowers were flying through the air as they both pummeled the man with their bouquets and shouted at him furiously. “Have I mentioned, Radcliffe, how little I appreciate the effect your wife has had on mine?” Tomas murmured suddenly, and Radcliffe glanced at him with amazement. “My wife? Good Lord, Tomas, you cannot blame Beth’s sudden change on Charlie. They grew up together, for God’s sake. After twenty years of influence, she was not like this.” Tomas frowned. “I had not thought of that. What do you suppose did it, then?” Radcliffe grinned slightly. “The only new thing in her life is you.” Tomas was gaping over that truth when Stokes slipped out of the church to join them. “Oh, dear. Lady Charlie and Lady Beth are hardly in the condition for that sort of behavior.

I want more, I said, putting a hand to my stomach, which rides higher than most know. Closer to the heart. I want the jiang bing that vendor will make when she runs out of nut butter. I don't think she's arrogant. I think she's right. I want to sample jian bing from every cart in Beijing, and I want to taste what those kids are eating at home, what they don't teach in cookbooks at Le Cordon Bleu. There's so much out there--- Helplessly, I said, I haven't even told you how much I love foods wrapped in other foods. Then tell me. I tried. I tried. Banh xeo in Hanoi, I said, and duck folded in the translucent bing of northern China. I spoke of tacos in Mexico City: suadero, al pastor, gringas. South Indian dosas as long as my arm, thinner than a rib of a feather. Oh, Aida, I said when I fumbled the names of the chutneys. How can I know all I've ever want? Something will get left out. I was wrong about cilantro. Tlayudas, she said stubbornly, as if she hadn't heard. Blini. Crêpes. They're basically French jian bing, I said with a strangled laugh. Pita sandwiches. Pickle roll-ups. Calzone. Bossam! I yelled, and the dogs barked and the children cheered and the streets of old Milan rang with the imported memory of pork kissed by brine, earthy with Korean bean paste, safe in its bed of red leaf lettuce.

We've been here three days already, and I've yet to cook a single meal. The night we arrived, my dad ordered Chinese takeout from the old Cantonese restaurant around the corner, where they still serve the best egg foo yung, light and fluffy and swimming in rich, brown gravy. Then there had been Mineo's pizza and corned beef sandwiches from the kosher deli on Murray, all my childhood favorites. But last night I'd fallen asleep reading Arthur Schwartz's Naples at Table and had dreamed of pizza rustica, so when I awoke early on Saturday morning with a powerful craving for Italian peasant food, I decided to go shopping. Besides, I don't ever really feel at home anywhere until I've cooked a meal. The Strip is down by the Allegheny River, a five- or six-block stretch filled with produce markets, old-fashioned butcher shops, fishmongers, cheese shops, flower stalls, and a shop that sells coffee that's been roasted on the premises. It used to be, and perhaps still is, where chefs pick up their produce and order cheeses, meats, and fish. The side streets and alleys are littered with moldering vegetables, fruits, and discarded lettuce leaves, and the smell in places is vaguely unpleasant. There are lots of beautiful, old warehouse buildings, brick with lovely arched windows, some of which are now, to my surprise, being converted into trendy loft apartments. If you're a restaurateur you get here early, four or five in the morning. Around seven or eight o'clock, home cooks, tourists, and various passers-through begin to clog the Strip, aggressively vying for the precious few available parking spaces, not to mention tables at Pamela's, a retro diner that serves the best hotcakes in Pittsburgh. On weekends, street vendors crowd the sidewalks, selling beaded necklaces, used CDs, bandanas in exotic colors, cheap, plastic running shoes, and Steelers paraphernalia by the ton. It's a loud, jostling, carnivalesque experience and one of the best things about Pittsburgh. There's even a bakery called Bruno's that sells only biscotti- at least fifteen different varieties daily. Bruno used to be an accountant until he retired from Mellon Bank at the age of sixty-five to bake biscotti full-time. There's a little hand-scrawled sign in the front of window that says, GET IN HERE! You can't pass it without smiling. It's a little after eight when Chloe and I finish up at the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company where, in addition to the prosciutto, soppressata, both hot and sweet sausages, fresh ricotta, mozzarella, and imported Parmigiano Reggiano, all essential ingredients for pizza rustica, I've also picked up a couple of cans of San Marzano tomatoes, which I happily note are thirty-nine cents cheaper here than in New York.

Show me." He looks at her, his eyes darker than the air. "If you draw me a map I think I'll understand better." "Do you have paper?" She looks over the empty sweep of the car's interior. "I don't have anything to write with." He holds up his hands, side to side as if they were hinged. "That's okay. You can just use my hands." She smiles, a little confused. He leans forward and the streetlight gives him yellow-brown cat eyes. A car rolling down the street toward them fills the interior with light, then an aftermath of prickling black waves. "All right." She takes his hands, runs her finger along one edge. "Is this what you mean? Like, if the ocean was here on the side and these knuckles are mountains and here on the back it's Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, West L.A., West Hollywood, and X marks the spot." She traces her fingertips over the backs of his hands, her other hand pressing into the soft pads of his palm. "This is where we are- X." "Right now? In this car?" He leans back; his eyes are black marble, dark lamps. She holds his gaze a moment, hears a rush of pulse in her ears like ocean surf. Her breath goes high and tight and shallow; she hopes he can't see her clearly in the car- her translucent skin so vulnerable to the slightest emotion. He turns her hands over, palms up, and says, "Now you." He draws one finger down one side of her palm and says, "This is the Tigris River Valley. In this section there's the desert, and in this point it's plains. The Euphrates runs along there. This is Baghdad here. And here is Tahrir Square." He touches the center of her palm. "At the foot of the Jumhurriya Bridge. The center of everything. All the main streets run out from this spot. In this direction and that direction, there are wide busy sidewalks and apartments piled up on top of shops, men in business suits, women with strollers, street vendors selling kabobs, eggs, fruit drinks. There's the man with his cart who sold me rolls sprinkled with thyme and sesame every morning and then saluted me like a soldier. And there's this one street...." He holds her palm cradled in one hand and traces his finger up along the inside of her arm to the inner crease of her elbow, then up to her shoulder. Everywhere he touches her it feels like it must be glowing, as if he were drawing warm butter all over her skin. "It just goes and goes, all the way from Baghdad to Paris." He circles her shoulder. "And here"- he touches the inner crease of her elbow-"is the home of the Nile crocodile with the beautiful speaking voice. And here"- his fingers return to her shoulder, dip along their clavicle-"is the dangerous singing forest." "The dangerous singing forest?" she whispers. He frowns and looks thoughtful. "Or is that in Madagascar?" His hand slips behind her neck and he inches toward her on the seat. "There's a savanna. Chameleons like emeralds and limes and saffron and rubies. Red cinnamon trees filled with lemurs." "I've always wanted to see Madagascar," she murmurs: his breath is on her face. Their foreheads touch. His hand rises to her face and she can feel that he's trembling and she realizes that she's trembling too. "I'll take you," he whispers.

I also gained a deeper appreciation of what it must have been like for my mother to be in a foreign country unable to speak the language (in her case, unable to read or write any language). As I walked around by myself, however, it was obvious that based on my body language people perceived me as American but at the same time different enough from other Americans that they felt free to come up and ask me all kinds of personal questions about where I came from, what kind of work I did, whether I was married, how many people there were in my family. Back in the 1930s when I asked personal questions like these of a Chinese student at Bryn Mawr, she reprimanded me for being too personal. I’m not sure whether that was because she came from a higher social class or because the revolution has opened things up. I answered their questions as best as I could in my limited Chinese. The ingenuity and energy of the Chinese reminded me of my father, for example, the way that they used bicycles, often transformed into tricycles, for transporting all kinds of things: little children (sometimes in a sidecar), bricks and concrete, beds and furniture. I was amazed at the number of entrepreneurs lining the sidewalks with little sewing machines ready to alter or make a garment, barbers with stools and scissors, knife sharpeners, shoe repairmen, vendors selling food and other kinds of merchandise from carts. Everywhere I went I saw women knitting, as they waited for a bus or walked along the street, as if they couldn’t waste a minute. I had never seen such an industrious people. It was unlike anything that I had witnessed in England, France, the West Indies, Africa, or the United States.

I was walking along briskly, dodging bootblacks, pen pushers returning from their midmorning coffee, lottery vendors, and a whole ballet of street sweepers who seemed to be polishing the streets with paintbrushes, unhurriedly and with a pointillist’s strokes.

SOMEWHERE ELSE. NO COUNTRYSIDE. NO beach. No pastures or barbed wire or crepe myrtles. A concrete world where he walked down a city street on a normal day with normal people up and down the sidewalks and in and out of the stores. Looking at the street signs but in a language that he didn’t understand and there was nothing distinct about this place. He walked on, looking into store windows, stepping into bars and looking around the tables, stopping at a pay phone and dialing and then ringing and ringing and no answer and hanging up and walking on. Newspaper stands and vendors selling hot dogs and a woman in a tight silver dress smoking a cigarette in front of a dress shop. A dog without a collar sniffing at a garbage can. The random honk of a car horn and he walked on, looking in the windows, looking at himself in the reflection

Witnessing all of those hardworking female street vendors in Vietnam also made me understand why my mom felt so passionate about me and my sisters working. While we were in Vietnam together, she explained that the country had a history of always being in wartime, so women were expected to rise to the occasion of making money for the family. Vietnamese women were always ready to take over roles traditionally filled by men, like A League of Their Own (but where everyone is Marla Hooch).

all around me early evening fog crawled across St. Giles, shrouding the crowded tenements, the garish advertisements plastered on the sides of buildings, the vendors’ carts, and the barefoot children playing in the street.

Do you know what strength is - forgetting sleep, romance, money I keep working without rest to unite the humans, that's my strength - a single mother working day and night so her child can have a bright future, that's her strength - a street vendor working hard since dawn for his family, that's his strength. Do you have such a strength of your own? Your ancestry, your family money, your material possessions - putting aside all these, what is your own true strength?

In 1947 Levitt & Sons, led by Bill, gambled on 1,200 flat, less-than-verdant acres of farmland set in the center of the island. Set about thirty miles from the Empire State Building, beyond the dense boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, stood this parcel of land, seemingly a world apart from the vibrant, dense urban street life filled with trolleys, vendors, and pedestrians. Levitt viewed this prospective transition in evangelical terms: “You marvel at the rebirth of man, man with his own piece of the good earth, his own share of light and air and sunshine.” To this reborn man, Levitt planned to sell single-family, detached houses in the suburbs.

Absent was the persistent cacophony of traffic, street vendors, pedestrians, construction, and the buzz of streetlights that filled every space of our tight living quarters both in Kuwait and in Amman. Instead, I awoke to the songs of birds and wind chimes, and I was lulled at night by the orchestras of crickets and the calls of jackals and wolves.

The next time you glimpse what looks like lunch from a Mexican street vendor being windblown toward you on the waves, swim the hell out of there—fast.

There was a bottleneck up ahead at the boulangerie. A wrought-iron cart, a more elegant version of the pretzel vendors' on the streets of New York, was posted outside. In addition to croissants and pains au chocolat, it was loaded with flattish ovals of yeasted bread. Some were covered with grated Gruyère cheese and bacon, some with a tangle of caramelized onions and anchovies. The script on the chalkboard sign said Fougasse, which I took to be a type of local focaccia. I leaned toward one topped with toasted walnuts, pungent with the smell of recently melted Roquefort cheese.

The narrow streets are lined with food stalls and vendor carts and plain, identical buildings—with one notable exception: Slurps and Burps (the Dizznee family’s tremendously popular apothecary), which adds a bold splash of color and a topsy-turvy style of architecture, along with a door that belches when anyone enters or exits.

As companies move toward distributed systems, Sybase and competing vendors—such as The ASK Group Inc., Informix Software Inc., and Oracle Corp.—are all offering products similar to System 10 . . . . Here we are in the “safe as milk” category, somewhat ironic in light of subsequent revelations about the limitations of Server 10. The innovations presented here are all continuous—performance, functionality, and capacity—and a number of other mainstream vendors are “all offering products similar” to it. Note the emphasis on company and market issues as opposed to product and technology. All of this speaks to mainstream positioning, either tornado or post-tornado. Since there is not a lot of emphasis on cutthroat competition, which one always expects with tornado products, the conclusion one would draw here is that Sybase 10 is on Main Street. Additional Indicators Beyond press coverage, a second source of clues to market status comes from the behavior of other companies in the infrastructure. Lew Platt at HP, for example, realized that their commercial Unix server business was in the tornado when software vendors were calling him rather than the other way around. Going further, when a tornado is under way, the easiest way to spot the gorilla is to look for the

Text WITCHYBOOKS to 24587 for news and updates. Dear Reader, Reviews are always appreciated. Did you love this book? Please take a moment to let others know in the form of a review on your favorite vendor. XOXO, Deanna

Zack hadn’t expected to like much about China, but as they passed a street vendor plopping batter onto a sizzling grill behind the greasy glass of her cart, his stomach grumbled with a certainty that whatever it was would be delicious to try. And the general atmosphere of the street . . . it was undeniably chaotic, yet there was something comforting about the hustle and bustle, like it was proof of how vibrant life can be.