My neighbors here have long been the cause for many a confused moment - why, lady across the yard, do you scream each night? Is it really all in Polish? Why does the number 33 play such a crucial role in your nocturnal rants? Dear vodka aficionados in the backyard, where do you congregate now that last summer's red velvet couch next to the trash containers has found a death of rot and decay? And lady of the lime green acrylic wool skirt and the pink child's jacket and blue hat and the tennis socks in sandals, where do your baby steps lead you each morning?
One thing that I do not have to speculate about, however, is why this lady stares to the ground with such concentration: I do the same, as does everyone else in this street. There are some unexplained holes, yes, but mostly, it's our canine neighbors who adorn it with their digestive products. And they do it with great joy and productivity. (I have tried to find it endearingly similar to my old Berlin home. I failed.)
(At this point I have to add: Should you be reading this through a facebook note, I don't think you can see the accompanying photos, so I might not be making much sense. Please click on "Read original post" or whatever it says below to get the full experience.)
So: One and a half years here, and I thought I had seen all there was in the dog poo market nowadays. How very wrong I was! I was walking there, lost in thought, thinking "Oh, look, an 'F'!" but actually having my mind on other things, when I realized that letters on the sidewalk are not a common sight outside Sesame Street. So I turned back.
I must say, I am impressed. Domestication has reached new levels! Literate dogs! I sense a whole new target group for advertising. Someone should do a market study.
[Excuse the public display of feces above. To make up for it, have a prettier sidewalk catch below.]
4 comments:
I presume the letter F does exist in Cyrillic? Or do they use the normal European alphabet in Poland? (sorry, probably the wrong word there).
Still, it's a great, mad picture. I shall steer The Geek, whose work involves copious amounts of dung, towards it as it will make her laugh.
Hope you're well!
Polish does have the "normal" alphabet, just with a few added lines and accents here and there and by combining consonants to represent certain sounds. I was told that it would be easier, in some ways, to use Cyrillic letters instead so there would be a letter for each of the sounds... but as it is, I live surrounded by things like cz and trz and szcz and ą ć ę ł ń ó ś ź ż...
Who is The Geek, I wonder? But any readers are welcome. So is dung appreciation!
Trzczsz; it's like Diacritical Marks Anonymous...
The Geek is my friend Julie, who has recently returned from The Gambia after spending four months collecting animal droppings and human tear secretions for medical science. Seriously. her blog is linked from mine ("Geek in the Gambia") and is fascinating, scatlological, and hilarious. The two of you would get on if you ever met - like a wildfire, probably. She looked at your dung-letter picture and said she had nothing as impressive although these days she has "lots of great sh*t stories"...
My word verification word is "opincev", which sounds vaguely eastern-european...
...and my spelling is up the creek, sorry!
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