tchotchke #43: The museum of now
Me, and the merchandise.
Last night, like I do many nights, I dreamed about shopping.
I dreamed about a long broad foreign boulevard filled with shops selling clothing and jewelry; I dreamed of entering a shop filled with beautiful antique theatrical posters, being told by the proprietor that there was a basement level, where beautiful sparkling toys and strange objects were being sold, and past the shelves and the people quietly perusing wares was a hallway opening up into a huge subterranean mall, where the echoing sounds of people shopping drew me forward into the bright promise of more, more. Then I woke up.
Sometimes I return to the same retail landscapes over and over in my dreams. Bazaars, markets, pop-up shops, multi-story bookstores, enormous glossy malls taking up whole spaceships, whole cities. In my dreams there is block after block lined with fascinating shops, lying just around the corner from where I live, that I never go to for some reason but am always longing to. I worry in my dreams that I have gone so long between visits to these magical streets that the items, the books or dresses that would change my life if only I could own them, will have been sold.
I remember these places as if I have really been there, even if I haven’t dreamed about them for years. The labyrinthine urban indoor mall, with whitewashed walls under fluorescent lights, where inside I found racks of cheap and beautiful frilly Japanese fashion that fit me perfectly. The enormous used bookstore, with worn nubby carpeting, where in the lower level I found huge, towering shelves of beautiful antique travel volumes and polar books.
A lot of people dream about malls—so many that there’s a subreddit, /r/TheMallWorld, for people to discuss this “shared astral space” they all go to when they sleep. They may be influenced by the “liminal space” meme, connected to the Backrooms metafranchise as popularly represented by the work of filmmaker Kane Pixels. But not a lot of these dreamers seem to dream about actually shopping in the malls—which, for me, is the best part.
I remember the first time I dreamed about shopping. There was no Hot Topic at my hometown mall, only at the slightly more downscale mall the town over, and I had been promised an excursion there with some middle school friends. The date was set, some weeks in advanced; I browsed images on Myspace and Polyvore of the kind of clothes and accessories I was yearning to acquire; and at night I dreamed of the mall as it existed in my mind, a marble-floored wonderland of studded belts and graphic tees and skinny jeans that would actually fit my shrimpy tween legs.
Naturally the Lincolnwood Mall did not live up to dream expectations, although I spent an awful lot of time there over the next few years. I do wish I could really visit those spectral dream shops; yet I can get just as much pleasure out of real ones. Left to my own devices I can shop for hours, days at a time: like on my solo trip to Japan, a 21st birthday present from my aunt, which was 10 days long: 4 of which I spent sick as a dog in a hostel bunk, and a full 3 of which I spent, joyfully, shopping. Not necessarily buying but shopping: an active verb, one full of potential. A feast for the senses, or at least touch and sight. Combing through racks — trying on clothes, shoes — holding things up to yourself in the mirror, imagining the kind of life you could lead if you took them home.
For me, shopping is fun as an activity in and of itself, but it all too often inevitably leads to buying. Money burns a hole in my pocket in a way that I’ve been assured I inherited directly from my father (although my mother is also a proponent of retail therapy, as needed). Once I received $300 from a class-action suit I had forgotten I’d registered for, and immediately went out and spent it on a pair of full-price Fluevogs—which, I might add, I get complimented on every time I wear them out, including just today.
My dad would often facetiously call a mall or shopping street “The Museum of Now.” My guilty secret is that I perhaps enjoy shopping just a little bit more than going to actual museums. You can take what you find home, when you’re shopping. And the ecstasy of ownership is long-lasting—just long enough to make you miss it when it’s gone, begin jonesing for the next hit.
The “hit” of really good shopping is tripartite. There’s the jolt of aesthetic pleasure you get when you come across The Item, when you first encounter it on the rack or on the shelf. Sometimes this alone can be enough to sustain me: I only need to find it to feel good, perhaps take a picture to remember it by. But I do very much love proceeding to the second part, which stretches out luxuriously across a few minutes: the moment you decide to take The Item home, when you twirl in it in front of the mirror and say to yourself, yes, you’re mine now. And the third part comes when you are home and it is yours: when you wear it out for the first time, or crack its spine to begin reading, or hang it up on your wall.
After that the cycle begins anew. Standing in front of my closet, trying on outfits for an hour, thinking, how the hell do I have nothing to wear? Social media exacerbates this, obviously, but it is certainly not the source of the problem. I dreamed of shopping long before I had a smartphone. These days, when I’m dosing myself with my fully allotted 35 minutes of TikTok a day I’m certainly more likely to want to spend on trendy clothes, shoes, and makeup; but at the times when I’ve locked myself out completely, my irrepressible covetous nature turns to equally (or even more) expensive markets: vintage furniture and home goods; antique gold jewelry; 19th and early-20th century manuscripts and ephemera.
Do other people want this much stuff, this badly? Why can’t I be happy with what I have?
My problem is that my wanting is always shifting up a gear, taking new forms. My tastes change and suddenly I hate everything I have; suddenly I see a new gulf stretching from who I am to who I want to be, crossable only by filling my apartment and wardrobe with better, different things, things I didn’t want a day ago. In college I liked Urban Outfitters; I still like Urban Outfitters, but now I also like Anthropologie and Sezane and Eliza Faulkner and Batsheva and Helmstedt and Camper, to say nothing of leatherbound antiquarian books and William Morris wallpaper and Matilda Goad cookware—I could go on.
Couldn’t the energy and creativity I spend on making wishlists and Pinterest boards and filling online shopping carts be better spent another way—like on making something new? Maybe. I mean, I do knit and sew… sometimes!
But I try to see the bright side. This inability to be content with what I have is, perhaps, another way to describe ambition. I may never be satisfied; but on the flipside, I’ll never be stagnant, either. I will always be looking for the next best thing and reaching for it. I will allow myself the pleasure and pain of evolution, of changing taste, of dreaming new selves into existence day by day. One day I will be rich and beautiful and beloved and have a house full of every thing I have ever wanted… but until then, I will just keep shopping.
Recently:
I appeared on The Study Hall Podcast to chat about the experience of reporting my Atavist piece about Pennell and Atkinson.
For Atlas Obscura, I wrote about the last days of the beloved Antarctic vehicle Ivan the Terrabus.
For Polygon, I wrote about Severance and Archive of Our Own’s new generation.
Thx for the shout out.