My intention, when I started writing this newsletter, was that it would force me to explore previously uncharted parts of this city. In looking for a way to love it, I would find the hidden, the unexpected. Niche museums! Hole-in-the-wall restaurants! Grand public works! Instead, I write recaps of errands at big box stores. Is that a reflection of my life? Or just life under Western capitalism? Either way, this past week we went to IKEA.
Despite the fact that I try my best to live a lifestyle in direct opposition to everything IKEA stands for, I cannot resist its lure. The Scandinavian simplicity packaged for American consumerism is a perfect pairing. Like a fine Madeira port and whatever a fine Madeira port goes with.
We went because we needed a stool, and maybe some lamps, and other stuff we didn’t know we needed but would leave with anyway. Since it was a weekday afternoon it was comfortably empty (take note, Costco!) but filled with representatives of the usual demographics (chaotic families, testy couples, helpless single men).
As we all well know, there are three components to IKEA: the showroom, the marketplace, and the warehouse. The showroom is my favorite part of IKEA—the furniture arranged in fake little rooms where ciphers live imaginary lives. As you wander, a cozy kitchen gives way to a minimalist den that opens to an airy (indoor) patio. You see a plant stand—wasn’t that a shoe rack a few rooms back? You check the indecipherable item name and sure enough it was. A single item, a thousand potential lives.
A few weeks ago we were in New York and went to the Met. The paintings are nice, sure, but for me the real draw is all those reconstituted living spaces—Japanese tearooms, Egyptian temples, French hotel lobbies. Complete structures, removed whole hog, then dumped in the middle of New York City. The past was full of maniacs. Lingering in front of a fake Parisian storefront with a bunch of equally enthralled teenagers, I felt satisfied at its perfection, empty that I had to leave it for the real world’s imperfections.
Maybe because we’ve spent so much goddamn time in our own houses these past few years, there’s a special pleasure in pausing in ones we don’t have to maintain. There are no dishes to be done. No toilets to be scrubbed. No shoes to trip over. Here the dusting, the scrubbing, the sweeping are all done by someone else, entirely unseen.
Well, mostly. Back at IKEA, between the rooms labeled “Gamer’s Paradise” and “A Place to Relax,” a concerned employee bustled through, noting a substance that had been tracked around the floor. “Everyone stay away!” Then, to himself, “Seriously? Someone tracked doo doo all over the floor.” He called for someone to clean it up, which at IKEA is called Housekeeping. Soon an employee came. She asked what it was. He said well it only looked like one thing, didn’t it? She giggled.
We walked on to the next set of rooms, watching our step, lulling ourselves back into a sense of calm by noticing perfectly placed pot racks and ingenious shoe storage. We left with the stool, the lamps, the other things we didn’t know we needed, off to live their real lives in our real house which at least doesn’t have any doo doo on the floor at this current moment.
Spot on😎
I laughed out loud at a few things here!