I’m driving down the ramp to the motorway. I’m afraid to merge, though the traffic is moving slowly on this Friday evening. My AC is dead, and it’s unbearably hot. I steer the car from the artery road onto the highway, knowing I will be stuck here for some time. The merge goes well, and I find myself in a swarm of tin. The hot air is scented with pollution, and the sun blazes right through, burning my face and my shoulder. I think about all the people around me, not knowing anything about their lives. Except for being in this jam, we may have nothing in common, yet I feel connected. I don’t know this city. I don’t know where this road is leading. Suburban interchanges all look the same. I visit them when I feel alone.
Clusters of big roads, vast parking lots, gas stations, McDonald’s, hardware stores, swimming pool suppliers, and other small businesses, a mall, and a gigantic supermarket. I enjoy strolling around there. I think it’s heaven. I know these places hold great imaginary potential. I can pretend to be a parent coming home from my well-paid office job in the city. My family is waiting for me at home. On the weekend, I will have time to build a treehouse with my kids. I still need wood and tools from the store, so I stop on the way. Wandering down the aisles, checking the discount section for bargains, I dream of having a tool collection. Tools give off a sense of reliability I like, one I need. The relationship I can have with a machine is marvelous. I get the feeling of holding liberty and power in the same hand. I wonder who the equivalent of the Marlboro Man for tools is. I could not audition for this role.
When wandering around, I like to check the paint section, too. The store’s layout designers have a way of hindering one from finding the good shades. It feels like uncovering a treasure when I finally do. I dream up a beautiful renovation and fall in love with their eccentric titles: Roofs of Paris Grey, Architecture of the Sun Orange, or Poetry of Stillness Black. I bet most people paint their homes in horrific colors because they didn’t find the right section, which leads to a generation of bad taste and abstruse RAL colors of the year. Space planners are the real driving forces of cultural change today.
Sometimes I walk up to the yard of a construction business just to ask for odd things. “Excuse me, do you have glass shards that I can use?” If they don’t repel me right away, I get bombarded with all sorts of questions. I have to make up quick and plausible answers, always aware that a wrong one will make me look like an idiot. Once I asked at a junkyard for plastic containers. They only had ones that had been used for mineral oils and wanted to know what I needed them for. I replied that I needed them to transport drinking water, and they looked at me as if I were crazy.
I like reading novellas that have been turned into movies. When I find out about one, I get a copy without checking the trailer or advertising images. After I’ve finished reading, I set a date and ceremoniously go to watch the corresponding film. I don’t enjoy the viewing at all. I sit there, checklisting scenes, comparing them to my knowledge of the plot, aahing and oohing when the director strays from the original. I do this alone, but I love to imagine having a friend around so I can annoyingly point out all the details and changes that have been made, as if I had witnessed it myself and were a better testifier. I use text to make sense of myself, to create narrative sense. I like to think of my life as a story unfolding and being told by an omniscient narrator. When I’m conversing with people, I sometimes decide to say something solely to benefit the plot or give my character more depth.