Borders // CHILDREN'S-PSYCHOLOGY-BARGAINS

BORDERS


Welcome to the urban jungle where the displays are meant to impress but no one
takes time to take in anything but the surface, where nothing is taken seriously
except for oneself.

This bookstore is here because a bookstore has to be here. Just like a cafe has
to serve sandwiches and cookies and non-dairy alternatives. Where the latest
movies have a life equal to your attention span and the bargain bins are filled
with yesterdays news.

Here we have options that no one wants to take but just like knowing that they have
them. Here is unrealized opportunity--people with unexcercised power and atrophied
realities.

Here in this "cafe" is a ring of laptops opened to privacy. Dressed to be on display,
no one wants to take center stage.

I wonder about the regulars. Who chooses to be here? This "cafe," this kiosk that
serves a coffee named 10 sizes too big, serves the eldest brothers and sisters of
NWA's caucasian fanbase. Armchair adventurers and advocates, politicos and
PTA's with words bulging from their gapes, they that want that sanitized coffee shop
feel without the lingering feeling.

The feeling of making contact.
The feeling when change happens.
The feeling of knowing you will see this person again and they will remember this
conversation.

What about the books in this shop? The trophies, the conversation starters, the
impulse buys and room decorations? The ones we love are worn, not on the
showroom floor. The ones valued here are new or valued by others, or valued
because of their lack of value: it's popularity by inflation and depreciation.

I'm not talking aloud. I'm not talking to or from or even mumbling passive-agressives.
I'm unengaging, silently dissenting, and enabling, making no mention of my dismay.
I want to think of myself as a silent advocate, but that's not any different than someone
without a voice. I'm the other side of the same dissembled coin.

So why are we here? Why do we come if we never talk, or want to touch or meet?
Do we want to be seen? Why are we so picky about whom we are approached?

These books, these clothes, these electronic devices lure unsuspecting "friends."
We are fisher men and women holed up on tabletop shores, willing to wait all day
for a bite. We are trappers camoflaged in the woodwork, waiting for prey even we
haven't suspected.

Sometimes I feel like an aggressive golfer simultaneously holding up a flag and
wanting to put a hole in one.

I haven't answered the question, but I may have proved a point: that no one here
knows what they're doing here but maybe if they stay long enough they will figure
it out. Or someone else will--but they have to be there to know it. Or be told about
it. This is the least a person can do: being here. A person can't win until they commit
the coins: life is a gamble that no one wants to lose. It's not always clear what's at stake
but no one wants to miss out.

I wish everyone here knew they were on the same team.

* * *
CHILDREN'S-PSYCHOLOGY-BARGAINS

This is a giant mall. A Mall the size of a city block. Every where I see are visually
correct standards for advertising: symmetry, groups of threes, ALL CAPS,
small caps, bolds and italics. Here the standards are high. It's like everyone is
special--so no one is.