George Barbier: Falbalas et Fanfreluches: almanach des modes présentes, passées & futures pour 1922: Elle et Lui / France XXe siècle, [Falbalas and Fanfreluches: almanac of present, past & future fashions for 1922: She and Him / France 20th century,], (1922)

"The future doesn't hold a place for any us, thank heavens."

To a man my age, a trip anywhere becomes a trip into an unwanted future. I might depart aspiring to visit my past but inevitably return having glimpsed a dreaded next. It will likely become much worse than I imagine, but the hints I do glimpse leave me stunned. There was a day when the future seemed promising. Midcentury America featured posters promising flying cars and what now appear to have been early precursors to Spandex®. The flying car notion fell apart when encountering human potential. Had we understood the cost of combustion engine propulsion, we might have retained our attraction to wagons and horses. Still, we were smothering ourselves in horseshit then, and the invisible pollution from the combustion engine seemed a vast improvement. Maybe it was.

I had warmly anticipated a visit to Norstrom's flagship store, remembering when Nordstrom really knew how to run a flagship store. Then, they offered variety such that I was very likely to find something close to whatever I wanted there. I entered with those same expectations to find the potential had shifted. I administered a small test to see if they'd retained their traditional attention to detail. My barefoot shoes were threatening to throw a lace, so I asked in the shoe department if they might have a replacement pair for a brown three-eyelet shoe. I learned they now stock a one-size-fits-all package of two pairs of forty-eight inchers, one black and one brown. I bought the package even though I knew they were half again longer than I needed. That lace could break anytime, and even the wrong lace could work in a pinch. In the old days, it would have been unthinkable that Nordies' shoe department didn't stock every variety of shoelaces known to humanity. Now, they apparently more tightly manage their inventory.

Daunted, I fled to the dress shirt department. Since The Muse became a Port Commissioner, I've needed a wider variety of dressy shirts to properly fulfill my arm candy role. I warmly remembered the finely tailored dress shirts I bought at Nordies, so I figured they might still stock a similar variety: pinpoint cotton broadcloth and cotton oxford cloth, fine checked and standard blue. The Muse and I searched through several displays while I followed, rejecting each in turn. Either the fabric was futuristic, meaning plastic, woven into patterns like drapery material, missing a pocket, or all three. My universe knows no use for a dress shirt absent a pocket. The prices ranged from the ridiculous to the absurd. We quickly winnowed the choices down to a single shirt, which I would have found acceptable had I not discovered that its cotton-like fabric was also plastic. An attentive clerk offered to help, and I tried to explain what I wanted. He offered everything he had but was forced to admit that not even his top-of-the-line shirt, priced at $275, was it. "You think too much of that one," I quipped. We shook hands as I left him to tend to his future while I went to continue searching for mine.

The Muse and I spent the balance of the day strolling around the city. We found impressive new construction strangely missing human components. Almost nowhere did we find shade or places to sit. The Muse suggested that perhaps they avoided creating comfortable public places because they would attract the homeless. Sleazeattle always featured legions of homeless people, just like every industrial city. Like always, evenings find plenty of people cowering in doorways and reclining on park benches. As The Muse and I were walking back to our post-modern hotel from the dystopian T-Mobile Field, we met a woman who asked us if we were the people she should talk to about getting a hotel room. I said, "No!" but I thought as we walked away that I should have probably said, "Yes!" instead. Truth be told, nobody was in charge of finding that desperate woman a hotel room, and we had one. I could have slept in my car, and she could have taken a shower, and all would have been a little righter with this world.

We inhabit the sum total of our missed opportunities because missed opportunities unavoidably accumulate into our futures. Our aspirations might motivate us forward, but those passing fancies and tiny potentials never pursued to make some discernable difference eventually get us. We can't find our way back home because we were never heading home. Ever onward, if not necessarily ever forward, we move through our lives with curiously confident strides. We should have known whatever we grew to most depend upon, whether a Nordies or a public bench, were destined to abandon us. They were never ours, regardless of how powerful our sense of ownership. We were Just Visiting, and so were they, heading elsewhere. I might find suitable mail-order dress shirts somewhere on the internet. I'm unlikely to find a genuine mail-order haberdasher. I will miss the worst the future has in store, for that's reserved for following generations. We do not live forever because we couldn't cope with losing all we so recently relied upon. The future doesn't hold a place for any of us, thank heavens.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Grace, #PureSchmaltz