“I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following, but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you. What news on the Rialto?”
lyrics
Upon further inspection of the Sunday market, you realise the stalls fit into two categories: Overpriced food, and overpriced new age spirituality. Feeling bold, you choose the latter; part of you hoping that throwing enough of your weekly pittance at dreamcatchers and organic kombucha could fill the void that gnawed at your insides. A void that had been looming during your entire career as a desk jockey at Slater and Gordon.
A tie dyed yurt catches your attention, partly due to its vivid colouring, but also partly due to its peculiar mish-mash of various eastern religious symbology that littered the tarpaulin, and the endless loop of Enya playing softly from an unknown source. Upon entering the yurt, a middle aged woman with dreadlocks and a distinctive body odour approaches you and offers to tell your fortune for ten dollars.
Already ten bucks in the red with nothing to show for it, you come to the conclusion that doubling down is the only logical choice in this situation, and slip a crinkled, ten dollar note into the woman's leathery palms. The woman shuffles a deck of tarot cards and rambles about astrology for what seems like hours, before finally spitting it out. "I see your future." The woman claims. You lean forward in anticipation, eager to hear about the exciting events and premonitions that await you. "Your future, and the future that befalls every one of your generations to come, is to return to this market every Sunday for the rest of your life."
The news hits you with the force of a collapsing brick shithouse, and you slump back into the lazily placed folding chair, a defeated man. No amount of incense or ghee could heal over this cosmic wound opened by the wrinkled seer in front of you.
Has the last twenty years of attending the Sunday market, week in, week out, been a product of your own free will? Or was it simply the strands of fate forcing you to dance like a marionette, swaying to the tune of tinny speakers playing the same three Hunters and Collectors songs?
As you stagger back to the interior of your musty 1999 Toyota Corolla, you finally accept the truth that you've been denying for years. You've always been here, and you will never leave. The sunday market isn't just a weekly event, it's part of your heritage, maybe even your DNA.
As the corolla flickers to life, you accept your fate and muse about swinging by Bunnings to stock up on office sized cacti, and setting up your own stall at the next Sunday market.
