10,000 bookmarks

I never folded a paper crane, much less made 100 or 1,000 of them to hang in Hiroshima as a symbol for peace.

Squirrels are burrowing ever deeper into the wooden skeleton of my wooden house.

Would a standing desk and a faux surfboard make office job life tolerable? What about regular massages and an in home vegan chef?

Notice my new non use of hyphens.

Shampoo that comes in bars. Toothpaste in tablet form.

There is a purse made of cork leather in a return shipping box on the floor that has been in return mode for nearly a near.

The new goal, instead of reclaiming $124, minus postage and the shipping box's cost, is to just use the thing. Some things retained after being deemed less than perfect or undesirable become tolerable. Strange. There is danger in failing to recognize which things are truly detrimental.

Arguably, most things are, because fossil fuels and plastics and shipping and low wages and politicians and billionaires, etc etc.

I have the ability to conform to a less than perfect purse, and it will replace a free gift tote I have used for years, first used long past its acquisition point (for it, too, was once deemed not great), received at a Bloomberg news sponsored journalism workshop, so long ago that it came with paper handouts and CD-ROMs. The bottom is fraying. The handles are robust. It holds my laptop well but has been crammed with too much for too long: things I cart around because I'm acting short term nomadic, going on three years now.

The laptop tells me every day it hasn't been backed up. Today it was something like "in 846 days."

On this computer, there is a large collection of .txt files labeled "links x-x-20xx," containing lists of things I once read or once meant to and things I once wanted or meant to buy, if I had more time, were I only more flush with cash and less overwhelmed by things I already have, such as many purses (but not as many as Carrie Bradshaw or Miriam Maisel or even, like Esther Greenwood, just color coordinated purse covers to match every outfit).

I must not mind the risk of losing files. I already know that there is nothing guaranteed linking those URLs to anything readable or buyable for any length of time. Take a look at the blogroll to the right; so few of those names are just ghost markers now.

Before the internet, I once commissioned my mother's husband, who was living in New York City, to find a dark green leather purse I had seen in a fashion magazine. I wanted it so badly. I had a pair of dark green leather Mary Jane shoes then or around the same time, and I had no reason not to believe that the listed store next to the photograph would have one of these wonderful purses for me.

But printed things go to press so long after they are reported. And capitalism only makes so many of any one thing before retooling the lines.

This man was not a reliable witness, anyhow, and for all I know he never checked the store, but the disappointment in believing in something that turned out to be so ethereal left me feeling left out.