Mar 19 2024 - A Trip to IKEA
Apr. 4th, 2024 03:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eerietomI thought it would be fun to go to IKEA while stoned.
a. you can get a cheap lunch there
b. the Cascade Station area is pleasant, almost utopian: nicely manicured lawns, a little park next to the train station, pristine commercial and industrial buildings nearby, and it was a bright sunny day
c. IKEA itself also feels a little utopian: all new furniture, nice interior layouts that were sometimes surreal (like a showroom full of couches mounted on walls), and cafeterias always seem a little cosmopolitan to me
d. afterwards I could head to the airport and hang out with a coffee for a while before going home
I also had the latest Gusgus album (DanceOrama, 2024) to listen to.
IKEA delivered in spades. I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a science fiction story, set roughly 1500 years in the future. I started to imagine IKEA as a functioning futuristic city, but if this was really a city where people lived and not a showroom, why were the homes so small? Why didn’t they have front walls or doors? My imagination worked overtime to solve those issues, but I shan’t share the solutions here; I’ll save them for my story. ;-)
While in the store, “Dream a Little Dream of Me” played. However, I misheard this lyric:
Stars shining bright above you
... as:
A shaggy dog of perfume
... which of course brought on a case of the giggles.
I made my way to the little park near Cascade Station. I sat down on a bench and started the music on my headphones, nodding my head and grooving along to the music. I had let my more-salt-than-pepper goatee grow longer than I usually do and I hadn’t shaved in a week, so was perhaps looking older than usual. A flight of fancy occurred to me: I wondered, if some young people came by and saw me dancing in my seat, what would happen?
The music was enhanced by the sights and sounds around me: passing cars and trains, pedestrians, birds (including one loud goose flying overheard), and the occasional airplane taking off from PDX, seemingly just a couple hundred feet above me. The bench was directly facing the sun, so I had my eyes closed most of the time. Phosphenes created by the sunlight provided some hallucinatory entertainment. I felt completely bathed in the warmth and light from the sun. The world suddenly became limited to my line of sight, just this tiny parcel of land, peaceful and placid, and I thought: “Life is perfect this very instance.” And I wept with joy!
*I had a similar experience in Japan while exploring some industrial areas: the silhouettes of several buildings blocked the horizon. It was as if the world had been reduced to just the few blocks around me.
When the album was finished, I headed for the airport. Alas, when I arrived, there were signs everywhere saying the airport was off-limits to everyone except passengers and those meeting them, and that one might have to produce a boarding pass to be allowed to stay. Rats! It was one of my fave places to chill, too. It was getting a bit late to head into downtown for a coffee, and not knowing where else to go, I went back to Cascades to the Starbucks there. I re-read some of the murder mysteries I’d written and got a pretty good laugh from the earlier stories where I wasn’t trying too hard to be serious and just have some fun with outrageous character names and such. But I also gained some insight on how to be a better writer. And then I went home!
a. you can get a cheap lunch there
b. the Cascade Station area is pleasant, almost utopian: nicely manicured lawns, a little park next to the train station, pristine commercial and industrial buildings nearby, and it was a bright sunny day
c. IKEA itself also feels a little utopian: all new furniture, nice interior layouts that were sometimes surreal (like a showroom full of couches mounted on walls), and cafeterias always seem a little cosmopolitan to me
d. afterwards I could head to the airport and hang out with a coffee for a while before going home
I also had the latest Gusgus album (DanceOrama, 2024) to listen to.
IKEA delivered in spades. I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a science fiction story, set roughly 1500 years in the future. I started to imagine IKEA as a functioning futuristic city, but if this was really a city where people lived and not a showroom, why were the homes so small? Why didn’t they have front walls or doors? My imagination worked overtime to solve those issues, but I shan’t share the solutions here; I’ll save them for my story. ;-)
While in the store, “Dream a Little Dream of Me” played. However, I misheard this lyric:
Stars shining bright above you
... as:
A shaggy dog of perfume
... which of course brought on a case of the giggles.
I made my way to the little park near Cascade Station. I sat down on a bench and started the music on my headphones, nodding my head and grooving along to the music. I had let my more-salt-than-pepper goatee grow longer than I usually do and I hadn’t shaved in a week, so was perhaps looking older than usual. A flight of fancy occurred to me: I wondered, if some young people came by and saw me dancing in my seat, what would happen?
| THEM | Hey old timer, you listenin’ to Lawrence Welk or something? (they all chortle and scoff) |
| ME | No, I’m listening to Icelandic house music! (they are appropriately impressed and all give me thumbs up or high fives) |
The music was enhanced by the sights and sounds around me: passing cars and trains, pedestrians, birds (including one loud goose flying overheard), and the occasional airplane taking off from PDX, seemingly just a couple hundred feet above me. The bench was directly facing the sun, so I had my eyes closed most of the time. Phosphenes created by the sunlight provided some hallucinatory entertainment. I felt completely bathed in the warmth and light from the sun. The world suddenly became limited to my line of sight, just this tiny parcel of land, peaceful and placid, and I thought: “Life is perfect this very instance.” And I wept with joy!
*I had a similar experience in Japan while exploring some industrial areas: the silhouettes of several buildings blocked the horizon. It was as if the world had been reduced to just the few blocks around me.
When the album was finished, I headed for the airport. Alas, when I arrived, there were signs everywhere saying the airport was off-limits to everyone except passengers and those meeting them, and that one might have to produce a boarding pass to be allowed to stay. Rats! It was one of my fave places to chill, too. It was getting a bit late to head into downtown for a coffee, and not knowing where else to go, I went back to Cascades to the Starbucks there. I re-read some of the murder mysteries I’d written and got a pretty good laugh from the earlier stories where I wasn’t trying too hard to be serious and just have some fun with outrageous character names and such. But I also gained some insight on how to be a better writer. And then I went home!
