The Global Idea of ‘The Commons’. Отсутствует
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Название: The Global Idea of ‘The Commons’
Автор: Отсутствует
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Биология
Серия: Critical Interventions: A Forum for Social Analysis
isbn: 9781782384809
isbn:
Today, the van is almost empty. Many seniors prefer to keep to their armchairs and skip Christmas altogether. Memories of Christmases so long ago, good or bad, can be unbearable.
Inside the mall she makes her rounds, ending up at Cindy’s Cinnamon. Following her ritual to the letter, she settles down to watch the last minute shoppers. The young flitter around like birds to the tune of Christmas ditties. Their elders, dead serious with time so short, are burdened with the responsibility of putting the merry into Christmas.
As she sits there, an obscure hymn from her childhood, uninvited, comes drifting in. Yield not to temptation, for yielding is sin, each victory will help you, another one win––the tune keeps rolling around in her head and the words keep coming out of nowhere. Why? Why after all these years? Why now?
Puzzled, she begins to ponder the strangeness of things. For instance, why has she long been too timid to walk into any of the shops? Why has she settled for just peering in the windows? After all, she has never considered herself bashful. But why can’t she do it? Isn’t she as good as anybody? True, she admits, she doesn’t look like your average shopper. And true, she doesn’t own a credit card for the simple reason she doesn’t have any credit.
That’s it, she muses––you’ve got to have a credit card to count for something in this world. But she’s got a right to be who she is, hasn’t she? Credit card or not, hasn’t she has the right to walk around and look at all the pretty things like everybody else? A sudden spurt of defiance propels her to the kitchen shop. She walks in cautiously looking all around, and nobody pays her the least bit of attention as she picks up a garlic squeezer, and then a grapefruit spoon. Nobody comes up and says, “Can I help you, ma’am?”
Feeling rather heady, she tours the toy store. In the “Sport Depot,” a young man stares at her as she examines a snowshoe, but he soon turns his attention to another shopper. She hurries past the bookstore and into La Belle Femme, and dreamily wanders among the dresses. She gently touches the lovely satin nightgowns trimmed with dainty appliqué, and plushy robes the color of emeralds. There’s a constant din of conversation all around her: May I help you?––Perhaps your wife would like these, sir?––Charge it please and send it on to wrapping.
At this point, she begins to realize nobody is paying the least bit of attention to her. After all, what must she look like? An old woman wandering around in a discarded jacket and a hat that looks like a flowerpot turned upside down. She fingers skimpy black lace undies, half puzzled, half amused, and nobody cares. And then it hits her: Gert is struck by the fact she is, indeed––Invisible!
This revelation gives her confidence. She proceeds to the cosmetic counters, where they are currently doing a brisk business in expensive perfumes. On the backside of a large display she comes upon a rack of lipsticks in the most beautiful carved gold tubes. In her younger days she had often seen women with these fancy lipsticks, but hers, by necessity, were always in plain plastic tubes, always a dull green or an unpromising beige.
She picks one up and looks at the label: Foxy Fuchsia. Another? Hot Cinnamon, and so on until she comes to Spanish Carnation. Sure now, that nobody sees her, she releases the seal, pushes the stick up, and encounters the pink of her dreams, contained in one small glistening pillar. Like a flash she comes to her senses, and terrified, recaps the thing. Standing there frozen, she hesitates; Then gripping it tightly, she heads for the restrooms.
When all the hand-washers have departed, she opens the lipstick with unsteady hands, and applies it. And behold, the face she once knew, youthful and shining, smiles back at her. She steps away quickly before the image vanishes.
She sits in a booth, and tries to analyze her situation, and damn, if that hymn doesn’t wing its way back again. Yield not to temptation, for yielding is sin, la, la, la. Quite depressed now, and possibly angry, she sits there and makes her decision. She drops the tube into her handbag, and click––it is hers.
Riding home in the van, her secret concealed in the purse on her lap, she suddenly starts feeling giddy. Like a schoolgirl about to come down with the giggles. Perhaps, I’ll go to the Senior Center tomorrow, after all. Maybe I’ll even stand ‘round the piano with all the other old farts, and sing Frosty the Snowman. And why not enjoy a sugary cookie or two?
“And yes,” she says to the hat directly in front of her, “I will definitely ask Norman to come back in the van for a splash of Old Smuggler.”
“What did you say?” The neck of the head was too stiff to turn around fully.
“I said, ‘I’m gonna take Norman up to my room for a snort.’”
“Oh, that will be nice,” the hat says.
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