A Fleeting Glimpse

I knew I had to get myself out of the room, out of this tiny space where I spend far too much time. The walls were closing in. Long, purposeful steps lead me to Union Square, to the bookstore which is my haven and which promises me refuge if only I make it in through its wooden doors.

But the air conditioned building, with its soft carpets and harmless music, afforded me little comfort today. I paced its shelves, shifted positions in the chairs where I'd stacked my treasures. Jaw clenched, eyebrows hardened, I went back out into the blinding sunlight, the impossible heat of New York asphalt. And I didn't know where to turn.

It was thus I found myself at my most guilty of retail pleasures: I was perusing the aisles of Kmart. This place that doesn't match my view of the world, nor my view of myself in it, this place that I don't want to support, this place that reminds me of my simple upbringing out west; this is where I come to feel a twinge of nostalgia, and the comforts of home.

Looking for thumbtacks, I walked up and down school supply-aisles, and my heart stung with the desire to merely be on summer holiday, to prepare for back-to-school and How will I decorate my locker this year? I looked at every single useless item of unecessary consumption, trying to rationalize a need, while my mind unwound in the silence. Couldn't I just have been allowed to be grateful for such a simple life? Lunches for the kids and Kmart errands in the afternoons. Keep my world small, maintainable, comfortable.

I know I cannot choose that life; I know I couldn't sink into its ease even if I wanted to. I would be clawing at the walls before sundown. (or worse, I would resent them.) But as I walked around this store, with its colorful plastic toys, giant-sized dog food bags and patio furniture, it hurt me so much to feel how that life has just slipped through my fingers.

Numb to the core, my jaws more locked in their angry face than before, I couldn't even walk home. I took the long way home on the train, staring straight into the nothingness, and I thought This, too, shall pass.