A Find?

Last weekend, we headed out to Tlacolula to the Sunday tianguis. It's a huge, rambling outdoor market that frames their stunning church and its courtyard. We braved many a tope bump in the road to get there and check out the offerings.

My first sight was a little boy walking his goats on a leash as if they were puppies. I can imagine the fate of those goats, and loved them dearly as they kind of bleated/sang while trotting down the street.

The market was in its early stages, which is good for many reasons. Less crowded, a relaxed pace, not getting pushed to the side, the vendors are not as pushy yet and, when you purchase, they kiss the coin and cross themselves because it's the first sale of the day. As did the indigenous woman wrapped in rebozos when I bought ten boxes of matches for ten pesos.

In a random corner, there was a woman without a stall, just a giant garbage bag. She was announcing she had shirts for 25 pesos, or $2.50. Well, all right. I stopped and had a look. They were your basic t-shirts you'd see on the endcaps at Target for $9.99 or something. I grabbed one in that ethereal light green color that I keep buying in an attempt to replicate a t-shirt I had in the early 1990s and can never seem to find again. It may be because that t-shirt was not truly light green, but rather the lightest lemon yellow with a hint of green, but I keep trying nonetheless.

And then I saw it. An indigo shirt with a yellow pattern. The pattern was wild, like some combination of an Indian or Mayan design, blended with flowers, giving this overall effect of like a bubbly paisley. I'd never seen anything like it before, and here it was for $2.50. Sure, I didn't like the little pockets or the tight little piping on the sleeves, but that pattern! I could paint it on a canvas or something. So, I snapped it up. Such a find. Upon bringing it home and taking the shirt out so to admire it, I found the origin of my mysterious pattern. The shirt was covered in the faintest outlines of Tweety Bird. I bought a shirt covered in abstracted Tweety Birds. Someday I'll post a picture of it here so you can laugh and laugh at me.