Dogwalk

On Sunday we went on a big outing. In the bag, on the subway, and out we come on 41st and 7th avenue. As I emerge from my Sherpa, I see in the distance the white tents on Bryant park, where the fashionistas have been embroiled in the melee of Summer 07 previews. We go in the other direction towards Hells Kitchen to the flea market on 39th St. PL is uninspired by what's there we walk briskly through, hardly stopping. Then begins our trek to the flea market on 25th st. Outside Penn Station, a small group of Amish people are singing hymns. A couple of them are approaching the pedestrians.

"Would you like a Gospel Card sir ?", the Amish girl asks PL, he declines but her smile is unwavering. I take the opportunity to sniff the hem of her dress, recently laundered, dried in the sun, delicate particles of a rural life, still linger in the pale blue polyester.

The concrete sidewalks along eighth avenue however in sharp, pungent contrast, reek of the multitude of city dwellers, ooze from a thousand garbage bags from a thousand restaraunts, layer upon malodorous layer. Washed by the rain, bleached and hosed by the restaurants and then re trodden, re marked and re stained. Is this what they call ugly beautiful? Despite its foulness the complexity of the odors are spellbinding. My nose zigzags over the concrete, surfing an ocean of scent stories. If PL would only stop and let me reconstruct this one right here by the scaffolding, or that one on the stoop of a brownstone. The march to the flea market is however, relentless.

We both score at the market. PL finds a small jacquard curtain faded to the color of a pair of old blue jeans . I find new admirers who I lavish with butt wiggles, hand nuzzling and floor crawling. Its as if he read my mind, just as I was thinking what I might be having for Sunday Brunch, we had already walked ourselves to the subway station and it was time to get in my bag and head uptown. In the sherpa on the way home I daydreamed that Andrea Leon Talley and Anna Wintour on their way to dinner saw the Amish girl and pronounced her dress the perfect example of the new collapsed volume.