I
know I wrote a post on how shopping has lost its glamor for me, and it is true,
in a way it has. I used to be a shopper, and shopping was always on my agenda
when I traveled. Now I feel I have altogether too much, and have everything I
could possibly need. You could call it old age. Besides, I like to see space,
empty space when I look inside a closet, not things piled up and spilling out.
I have come to adore space. Take this tiny 600 square foot apartment. It feels
big to me because our 3,500 square foot home in So Cal is full and this is
empty. The dressers have nothing in them here and the closets, too. This place
feels huge because I have time. Let me explain in my twisted way how space
equals time. Because this apartment has only the necessary things plus two
small suitcases – Payson and mine – I wake up in the morning and write for
hours. It is a psychological thing. I am not tied into any schedule. I could
become addicted to traveling like this.
But
I was speaking of shopping. One doesn’t want to own more, and shopping always
makes you accumulate things. And yet . . . isn’t shopping one of the things we
were made to do? Isn’t it an expression of our engagement with the material
world, the world out there? My mother at 93 is thinking of getting new curtains
for the room that has become her world, though she still takes care of the
entire house, and had it painted recently; she makes sure the silver and brass
is polished regularly; she delights in buying annual winter flowers for her
garden, and gives me a report of the stage of the pansies (they have buds on
them now) and all of this keeps her plugged into life as we humans know it.
What
would happen to the world if we stopped shopping? I recently visited my nephew
who is captain in the Merchant Navy in a shipyard in Long Beach, LA. The paths
in the shipyard were made by containers from China piled one on top of each
other to New York skyscraper heights. This was the place where China comes to
America, and carries back America in the form of garbage to its factories to
process it again for our shopping bags.
Shopping
is sometimes a worthy goal for getting out of the house, and when Payson
suggested he take me to Bloomingdales a few days ago (no doubt to make up for
his Gollum remark), I was thrilled. This is a rarity, you understand, because
Payson hates to shop.
So,
to Bloomingdales with Payson to find fleece-lined leggings. Streets were lit up
in a wonderland way, and being outside was exciting after a day indoors, doing
my favorite thing: scribbling. The underworld morphed into heaven! All those
sorry faces in the subway were smiling and happy (there is no doubt, none, that
what we see is a reflection of our own states of mind). Bloomingdales was a
Maya Bazaar, full of all sorts of expensive, lovely things. Payson even waited
patiently while I tried on my leggings. He even bought me a hat in addition to
the leggings that I love.
We
walked back to our apartment instead of taking a bus, shopped some more on the
way back, and I came back quite in love with New York. And the few things in my
shopping bag were not the only reason.
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