Such a cold first day of December... Where I live it isn't that bad, mind you; there is barely any snow on the ground, that's for sure. It's just the icy gusts of wind... These feel like they could freeze your face if you stay out for too long.
I woke up early today, and spent some time sorting out my mess of papers and notebooks I'd thrown in a pile on a shelf. I came across old CDs that looked badly damaged by lack of care. Still, I recognised them and wondered if they could still be played - and they could. These were pirate CDs they used to sell for a few quids on that huge black market in Warsaw. Of course the trick was that when you bought one of those you could never be sure they would actually be working, or even if the songs that were supposed to be on them were really there.
I remember the very first time I ventured into that market. One girl from the school I had just started attending had asked me to come along with her because she wanted to buy some make-up and other cheap trinkets. I followed her there, wide-eyed and curious, looking around me at the hundreds of stalls everywhere, many of them filled with all sorts of junk. At some point we walked past a stall (well, it wasn't a stall, just a couple of guys standing with their gear lying on a blanket) displaying a gun with its silencer for sale - complete with a balaclava and a pair of black gloves. I glanced back at what I had just seen and pulled my friend's sleeve to have her look at it. We then glanced at each other, chuckled, and carried on walking.
That same morning, as we wandered about the market, a homeless-looking man stopped us and began dangling a tiny puppy in front of our noses. Naive as we were, we started stroking the puppy's head in awe and the man suddenly thrust the dog in my friend's arms before asking for 50 zloty for it. My friend shook her head and thrust the dog back into the man's hands, but then we both felt so bad for that poor puppy... Just before that happened, my friend had been telling me how her parents were planning to buy a dog, so I said: "why don't you buy this one, then?" She thought it made sense, after all, a dog is a dog, right?
That day, instead of buying some make-up, she ended up buying a puppy on that market... of course, as soon as she handed the money to the man and found herself with a puppy in her hands, she glanced at me and said blankly: "now what?"
We were supposed to return to school for the afternoon classes, but there we were with that puppy on our hands. I can no longer remember what we did next, but I do remember how angry her parents were when she brought that stray puppy back home. In the end, they dumped him on the doorstep of some neighbours and later bought a pedigree puppy.
Yeah... It seems that what looks good will always tend to prevail over what is actually good in general.
And today my thoughts are stuck. Maybe the icy winds managed to freeze my brains.
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