On Archil Tsagareti street is a tiny car that someone painted pink. The license plates are gone, but then I spy them inside on the dusty back seat. One of the back tires is flat. How long did it sit here? Are they coming back? I imagine the adventures made in this little beast. The four-hour drive to the Black Sea with the windows down, cranking old songs on the tin can radio. Drives to the airport, sending loved ones on safe trips, and then picking them up so many days later. The familiar pink chassis, coughing and rattling, then purring as the road slips away and the tires grab on the loosest rocks, throwing them like knuckleballs into the fields.
And then, somehow I am standing in front of a nondescript building. Not old, not new. Nothing special but a guitar is playing from inside. Then an accordion joins in, a heavy downbeat, a stomp of a song I do not recognize. And then voices join in, an avalanche of them - the hair stands up on my arms. I record a little bit of it, with traffic roaring by, as a stray dog trots past. Just a Saturday afternoon, the sun wide, the sidewalk cooking, a breeze kicking up as the guitar strums like a rooster, proud and tall.
This is Tbilisi.
pink cars and roosters