I live here

The mall presents a picture of the way things were supposed to have been, if everything had gone right in your life. (Note that I don't say "my" life; they're not talking to me personally, they're talking to all of us.) I walked through Crate and Barrel because I wanted to look at their Christmas ornaments, and because there are a couple of gifts I have in mind that might be bought there. The music playing in the store was quite somber. I looked a the dishes, the pots and pans, the off-beat toys and I thought about the way things might have been: me in a house in the suburbs with an SUV, a husband and a couple of kids. Now, I know that wasn't ever in the cards for me; still I can't help wondering what if.

I walked through April Cornell--home of gorgeous floaty rayon print dresses--and I thought another life: me in some funky house in the country, filled with wonderful old things, with a jumbled up old garden and lots of pets, and a mate with a respectable job. I spend my time writing feature articles for national publications, or something that supplies equally good conversation for the interesting people who come to visit.

I stopped at Cole Hahn and tried on $2000 worth of shoes, none of which worked out for me. All I thought of there was being so loose with my budget that I wouldn't think twice about buying every last pair of the shoes. (But not the boots, which didn't fit properly at all.) If I were setting that particular life, it would have me in some chic urban space-type loft that had been photographed for Metropolitan Home. Completely impractical, but lovely to look at.

The thing about all those lives, none of them are real. In my life, the one I live in, I got back in my Saturn and headed across the 14th Street Bridge back into the District. The sun was behind me, a wall of dimpled dark clouds before me. The city lay in between, gleaming white; it had never looked so brilliant.

That's where I live.

before - after