The primitive babtism that is shopping.

Onto daily life: her face was avant-garde, expressionless, saved from complete monotony by two thin streaks of deepest, blood red lipstick. She regarded the counter of the cosmetics stand with deep concentration, it could have been as if a primitive baptism was in progress.

 Then I thought of someone who had said that 'cinema was a church' and I realised I was deifying her.  I watched her, her face in deep concentration, the red lips startling in their call  for attention, it was as if on seeing the myriad opportunities for facial change this had imbued her with hope;  it was if she had undergone some primitive form of baptism. She was unreachable. I watched her leave the department store cosmetics counter as if propelled by some deep saving force.

I am imbng the tedious modern rituals of shopping with religious significance. However, I thought,  shopping  does have the elements of primitive baptism, as I looked at her, her face concentrated on the possibilities for facial change.  It seemed that she was propped up by what seemed a deep saving force, she seemed stunned. But is that not shopping - a deep saving force for most?

Shopping, an act so boring that boredom itself soon becomes the main topic of conversation. Shopping as  ritual, as restoration, even if it is a fall into inanition.

 

Where the hell is the sports section? Now isn't that male? Up another escalator.  I get off on the wrong floor I am in the...where am I...Bedrooms, beds, beds, all kind of beds. Women coyly taking off theirs shoes and bouncing on the mattresss and the odd male, prepared to play the game and be the fool and bounce too. Unfortunately for all his false teeth pop out and there is a mad embarrassed cover up job to hide the offending prostethic. I am so amused  by this human frailty that I leave the store, I will get the tennis shoes somewhere else.

As I cross Oxford Street, I see her ahead of me, she of the avant garde face. Now she is holding the plastic shimmer of a dry-cleaner’s long sheath. Further proof that one is monied and that one's time is precious. She holds it up high, this long shimmering plastic badge of privilege that glimmers in the suns;  her plastic shield as a class weapon against the advancing motorised missiles. Is it her need to let them know she was equal to any situation.