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Moby-Jenna
Sep. 22nd, 2008 11:03 am(Being a pastiche I wrote a few years ago.)
Call me Jenna.
Some months ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no romance in my life, and no one particular to interest me in such, I thought I would focus on my shopping and see the upscale boutiques of the cities.
It is a way I have of driving off the ennui and filling my time.
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before racks of comfortable shoes, and hiding my face from every mirror I see; and especially whenever my soaps get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from eating ice cream from the carton, and methodically breaking rules of diet--then, I account it high time to get to stores as soon as I can.
This is my substitute for red roses and diamond rings.
With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the shops.
There is nothing surprising in this.
If they but knew it, almost all women in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the stores with me.
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by shopping districts as Indian isles by coral reefs--commerce surrounds it with her surf.
Right and left, the streets take you storeward.
Its extreme downtown is the Battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land.
Look at the crowds of window-shoppers there.
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon.
Go from Washington Square to Times Square, and from thence, by Fifth, northward.
What do you see? Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal women fixed in clothing reveries.
Some leaning against the windows; some seated upon the park benches; some looking over the bolts of silk from China; some high aloft in the elevator, as if striving to get a still better encompassing view.
But these are all working drones; of week days pent up in lath and plaster--tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks.
How then is this?
Are the green fields gone?
What do they here?
But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the stores, and seeming bound for a sale.
Strange!
Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the shops; loitering under the shady lee of yonder coffeehouses will not suffice.
No.
They must get just as nigh the stores as they possibly can and spend all.
And there they stand--miles of them--leagues.
City dwellers all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues--north, east, south, and west.
Yet here they all unite.
Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the ringing of the cash register of all those boutiques attract them thither?
Once more.
Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a shop along the stream.
There is magic in it.
Let the most absent-minded of women be plunged in her deepest reveries--stand that woman on her legs, set her feet a-going, and she will infallibly lead you to stores, if commerce there be in all that region.
Should you ever be naked in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor.
Yes, as every one knows, meditation and shopping are wedded for ever.
But here is an artist.
She desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco.
What is the chief element she employs?
There stand her trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps her meadow, and there sleep her cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke.
Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue.
But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherdess's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherdess's dress were fixed unto the current trend of fashion.
Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies--what is the one charm wanting?--Shopping--there is not a fashion boutique there!
Did Niagara have not souvenirs for sale, would you travel your thousand miles to see it?
Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handsful of silver, deliberate whether to buy herself a meal, which she sadly needed, or invest her money in a fall wardrobe of russet hues?
Why is almost every robust healthy girl with a robust healthy soul in her, at some time or other crazy to go to the mall?
(END)
Call me Jenna.
Some months ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no romance in my life, and no one particular to interest me in such, I thought I would focus on my shopping and see the upscale boutiques of the cities.
It is a way I have of driving off the ennui and filling my time.
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before racks of comfortable shoes, and hiding my face from every mirror I see; and especially whenever my soaps get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from eating ice cream from the carton, and methodically breaking rules of diet--then, I account it high time to get to stores as soon as I can.
This is my substitute for red roses and diamond rings.
With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the shops.
There is nothing surprising in this.
If they but knew it, almost all women in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the stores with me.
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by shopping districts as Indian isles by coral reefs--commerce surrounds it with her surf.
Right and left, the streets take you storeward.
Its extreme downtown is the Battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land.
Look at the crowds of window-shoppers there.
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon.
Go from Washington Square to Times Square, and from thence, by Fifth, northward.
What do you see? Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal women fixed in clothing reveries.
Some leaning against the windows; some seated upon the park benches; some looking over the bolts of silk from China; some high aloft in the elevator, as if striving to get a still better encompassing view.
But these are all working drones; of week days pent up in lath and plaster--tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks.
How then is this?
Are the green fields gone?
What do they here?
But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the stores, and seeming bound for a sale.
Strange!
Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the shops; loitering under the shady lee of yonder coffeehouses will not suffice.
No.
They must get just as nigh the stores as they possibly can and spend all.
And there they stand--miles of them--leagues.
City dwellers all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues--north, east, south, and west.
Yet here they all unite.
Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the ringing of the cash register of all those boutiques attract them thither?
Once more.
Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a shop along the stream.
There is magic in it.
Let the most absent-minded of women be plunged in her deepest reveries--stand that woman on her legs, set her feet a-going, and she will infallibly lead you to stores, if commerce there be in all that region.
Should you ever be naked in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor.
Yes, as every one knows, meditation and shopping are wedded for ever.
But here is an artist.
She desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco.
What is the chief element she employs?
There stand her trees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were within; and here sleeps her meadow, and there sleep her cattle; and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke.
Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue.
But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherdess's head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherdess's dress were fixed unto the current trend of fashion.
Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger-lilies--what is the one charm wanting?--Shopping--there is not a fashion boutique there!
Did Niagara have not souvenirs for sale, would you travel your thousand miles to see it?
Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handsful of silver, deliberate whether to buy herself a meal, which she sadly needed, or invest her money in a fall wardrobe of russet hues?
Why is almost every robust healthy girl with a robust healthy soul in her, at some time or other crazy to go to the mall?
(END)
