Sunday 5 May 2024

8/28/2003 - Creative Writing Corner

It’s like everyone is a shopkeeper. You sit in it, at the desk, having set up the window with all you have to offer. Then you wait for someone to come past and like what they see- they come in, you show them more.


Or you go out yourself and search the windows for what you like. Go out and walk the streets to sell yourself, your image, door-to-door.

If it works out, you each shut up shop at least temporarily before deciding whether or not to settle down in the flat above or move to a bigger place.


People forever setting up shop and people forever flowing freely from shop to shop on the task of a lifetime. To find the shopkeeper to go into business with.


But I’m stuck. Her shop window is amazing to me. Like Hamleys' window to a child. Or Thorntons when the ice cream bit is there.


And I’m stuck.


I need to be looking in other windows instead of only seeing those who pass, fleetingly; or minding my shop- a real mess, a tip. Clean, sparkling windows (I employ a window cleaner), but inside a mess. A thick film of dust covering all the tables, nothing there or what is there has gone off. In elsewhere, “Gone for 5 mins.” 5 minutes that last a lifetime.


I can only stand and stare. Others go in, come out. I stand and stare- unable to go in or walk away.