Kimberly V.
Yelp
The holiday season irritates me. In fact, I'm more likely to pop in my copy of Disintegration and listen to it on loop at this time of the year than even Halloween. Because nobody forces you to do a full-scale stock of what the past year has meant to you and whose presence in your life you'd like to celebrate the most during Halloween. But we have to do that around Christmas. So Robert Smith and his honey tenor flow from the stereo as I go about my business feeling like I'm giving Western society the silent treatment.
One of the things on my mind, especially today when NPR reports that the U.S. has been in a recession since the summer before last, is that hairy "What am I doing with my life?" elephant. Do I enjoy coming into my office, shifting papers around, and having to make nice until five? Am I content enough after five o'clock to justify my whereabouts before that hour? And if I don't like the answers to either of those questions, what can I do to fix that? When is Lost going to come back with new episodes and how did they move the frickin island? Why are feathers in style again? How will Robert Smith wear his hair once he starts to go bald?
You can probably tell I'm not very good at that area of inquiry. But I take solace in the fact that most people my age don't have satisfactory answers to a lot of those questions, either. That's OK, probably even better to be uncertain about the future now than it will be ten years from now. Still, it's always inspirational to meet peers who not only get to do exactly what they love for a living, but have hit on a career so cool that you're half convinced they are TV characters.
Take the owners of Artemisia. They sell a wide variety of plants, from ballerina-like bamboo trees to shiny succulents. They arrange the wares as if they're pieces in a museum. The outdoor section really feels like walking through a friend's thoughtfully planted backyard. Their business space doubles as both a nursery and an art studio. As if that's not evidence of amazing karma enough, the owners - a young couple - get to play music of their choice and be cute and in love and go home knowing that they're selling a product that pleases the gentrified consumer populace as well as poor 'shmoes who just want something alive and pretty in their shoebox-sized kitchens.
Plus, they own a shop in one of the busiest little avenues the eastside has to offer. If The Cat* and The Boy* didn't respectively eat and kill all the plant life that arrives in their home, the owners of Artemisia would probably see me way more often. We have black thumbs to match our black souls.
*Knowing that my house has not been kind to plants but still manages to contain these two characters, I can't really feel too sorry for myself or too morose about the future. But I'm still going to blast the Cure until New Year's Eve.