Yesterday I went to buy a sketchbook. My right hand/wrist/arm finally feels like I might be able to return to this practice--fingers crossed.
I walked into the store and was overwhelmed by the sight of all the autumnal merchandise. It wasn't the presence of autumnal merchandise itself, with the glimpse of Christmas merchandise just beyond. I'm used to seeing stuff that seems out of season or at the wrong time. I know that capitalism is moving on a different timeline than I am.
I saw a few glittering pumpkins, and I was taken back to autumnal decorating at my old job. When it looked like the campus would be closed by September 2021, I saved a box of autumn decorations even as I threw out the Christmas decorations. At the time, I thought there was a remote chance that they would keep the campus open until the end of the year, but I assumed there wouldn't be enough students to justify decorating.
The campus stayed open longer, but by the time for holiday decorating, the new owners had declared all campuses would be decorated the exact same way, and they didn't deliver the decorations until very late in the season. We put up the banner, hung up a few of the complicated snowflakes, and called it done.
However, before that, we did put up the autumnal decorations I saved. And seeing all those glittered pumpkins brought that time back to me, that time when we could decorate however we wanted because no one higher up was paying any attention to our campus. I felt this weird wave of grief as I thought about all the people who were once employed there and are no longer. Even if we had stayed, we wouldn't have been allowed to decorate that way again. It was a strange, end-of-times workplace, even as it didn't end the way I was anticipating.
It was strange to wander in the autumn decorations, even as we spent the week-end awash in summer produce: cantaloupe, watermelon, tomatoes, and the best corn on the cob I've had in years. But again, I'm used to that disconnect.
From there, I wandered back to one of the thrift stores we visited a few weeks ago. I will be in great need of lamps at my seminary housing, and one of the thrift stores had a great deal. The store still had that great deal, but they had other deals too. I left with 2 lamps that hadn't been there 2 weeks ago. I paid very little for them, as much as I would have paid for just the lampshade, if it had been new. They look like they were made in the 60's, with curved lines out of wood, probably designed to remind us of Tahiti.
It's another way of falling out of time, these lamps that evoke a different time, headed with me into a future that I can only glimpse as it shimmers in the distance.
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