Flea market and CO2

This morning, I was walking on my way to work on Via Petroselli, just before Piazza della Bocca della Verità, when I caught sight of a woman's legs, ankles and heel joined, in leather ankle boots, lying down on the ground. Passers-by walking ahead of me hide her face with their long coats; and their legs, crisscrossing as they walk, let only see the color of her jacket. Surrounded by a small group of people smoking and talking, totally indifferent, she lies down on the pavement, among the scooters that are protecting her. Two policemen wait a bit farther. Her dark ankle boots seem there to cut the white line of the road, cars slow down as they come closer, a lady shouts at the ones that don't let her cross the street. I understand that the ambulancy won't arrive anymore. Perhaps one will write about her in the news in brief, about this lady lying among the feet of those who protect her too late. Perhaps.

Saturday, my mood wasn't so dark, I roamed even merrily in the streets, for once empty of people: they were inside shops. Sales. I'll use the occasion to buy new shoes, my old ones hardly bear Roman pavement. The market under plane-trees, nearby, displayed its fishes and smelt good sea..

The National Geographic talks about deforestation in Amazonia, a happy-ending expedition to the North Pole, migration of humpback whales and hummingbirds. Things that soon nobody will talk about anymore, when the Mato Grosso will have changed its name (literally: dense bush) to Grande Campo de Soja Que Engorda os Proprietários Terrestres (lit.: big soyfield which fattens squires), when expeditions to the North Pole will be done by boat and will always end happily, and when whales and hummingbirds won't need to migrate anymore. What a wonderful world is that one, intended to facilitate our job.

In front of the Castel San Angelo, an ice rink. Despite the coolness of the ice, it's a hot day. Lili Allen "makes me smile". I conclude Senilità written by Italo Svevo on Piazza del Popolo, under the rays of the sunset.

Walking back, I find the bookshop Il Mare, which sells a large number of everything about sea. I'd like to do seakayak on Kamtchatka peninsula.

Sunday; that's when my dark mood came. Green mood rather. I had decided to gallivant toward the Trastevere, on the other side of the Tiber, so. I went there by il Gianiculo, to say hi to Garibaldi and enjoy the calmness of hills. The garden of one of the American embassies

Downstairs, a huge flea market straggles. One can find everything: scrap mercants, book mercants, people who seem to sell all they own, i.e, for some of them, a plastic dwarf or old trinket on a dusty blanket, forgeries sold at high price under the nose of policemen, kilograms of unusable clock's mechanisms, kilometers of wires from mobile phone chargers, one laptop which looks so strange on these stands that it must work as well as this half dismantled boat-engine, others suggest curtains, a bit of color, discs, a bit of music, watches and fake guns, mobile phone's bodies, electric components, memory sticks, plastic things, dvds, and all the stuff our occidental society send to Asia to build it up, that comes back to us and that we buy, use, stock, forget, sell again so that others buy it, sell it to those who will buy it, use it and forget it again and so on until it ends on the dusty blanket of an Italian bum or a lady from the Balkan, lean hope to feed a day or a family.
And me, in crowds squeezing and moving me, my green ideas make my mood darken: is ecology a thing of well-to-do? Who, in this thousand of people, thinks about the future of Earth? Rather, who has not much daily problems to think about our planet's future? North Pole's ices and the Amazonian forest? Which one of these faces I meet thinks like me that batteries costing 1€ for 5 are not a solution for industrial contamination? How a president-to-be will take into account these environmental problems while the half of French population lives with less than the Smig (official mimimum salary, almost 1400€/month) and a good part with something less than the Rmi (assistance for unemployed, around 500€/month)? It's a good thing to create washing-machines and fridges saving energy, but how many buy 2nd hand washing-machines and fridges that don't save, or don't save anymore, energy? Proposing tax-deductible assistance for those who use solar panel or transform their houses in HQE (French High Quality for the Environment); but how many are under the taxable income and consequently can't have this assistance?
Walking out, I follow the Tiber, which at the edge of the city grabs tatters of plastic to the branches of plane-trees. A bit farther, slums; heat escapes from a stove pipe.

ciao
yvan

Post Scriptum which has a lot to see : I recommend you (for the ones who read French) to read "Dol" written by Philippe Squarzoni. After "Garduno, en temps de paix" and "Zapata, en temps de guerre" (two comics books about globalisation and the way it affects our life -negatively and positively- that you can find in good bookshops or in my bedroom), Squarzoni is attacking last years' conservatory policies and eventually relates it to our "new" environmental problems. The English translation of "dol" is "wilful misrepresentation". A very good political comics book, soon in my bedroom.