Side Streets

There is a broad main street in Pacific Grove, and there are narrow crossing streets along the length of it as it goes through downtown.  Merchants whose businesses lie along those skinny streets place signs on the main street corners to attract traffic to their front doors.  The signs stand like small dogs wearing saddles with their noses pointing uphill or down.

Spying something small and unusual as I wend my way along an avenue piques my imagination; the signs work.  If I have a few extra minutes, I satisfy my curiosity and look for things I haven't seen before, go places I've never been, find a new angle from which to view the world.

This may be the main difference between the way men and women shop.  I've heard men say - very often - that they just want to get into a store, find the thing they're looking for and get out as quickly as possible.  Wandering, touching, and exploring quietly are generally the things women do as they make their way along aisles of merchandise or along little streets in towns and cities.

If I were you, men, I'd keep this in mind when considering how to get a lady's attention and make her content and happy.  Allow her to explore and experience new places with all her senses if she needs that.  Rushing a woman who is ready to shop is a sad thing, and resentment will build and spill into other aspects of life.

Young guys in high school and college always ask each other how to get a girl.  The answer is do what the girls love:  Dance, shop slowly, develop an eye for detail and intrigue.  Especially the intrigue.  There lies the flirtation, sense of play and a little bit of danger.  It's a funny thing, is intrigue and mystery.  It unfolds and reveals layers of the unknowable and interesting subtleties of life.

Poking around in places that invite exploration, imagination and that suggest possibility is where the excitement in a day takes on depth.  Hunting, seeking, and finding stir the spirit.

I saw one little sign today and took a side street, mentally marked the shop as I drove slowly by on my way home.  I'll go back on foot sometime soon, see what might be there.  I could see the merest hint of the interior through the front window, mysterious, dim, something that looked like many things I could imagine.  Now I want to solve the little mystery.  But not too quickly.  It's more fun that way.  

Key as Icon

Keys are icons of possibility and mystery.  The keys I have are mostly orphans and duplicates, functional at one time, utilitarian and ordinary from the time they were made, less so now that they just sit purposeless in my bowl on the countertop.

There is one key in particular that is very old; it was my grandmother's key - to what door I am not sure.  It is a key from another age, a simpler time.  It's brass, long, classic in design, but it seems to be something special; it's a whisper, a hint.  A key like that seems to have developed a mystique simply by having outlived my grandmother and the lock it was intended for.  It stirs the imagination even as it lies quietly in my hand.

It's the kind of key that Mary found that opened the secret garden, the kind of key that rattles nervously in the keyhole when a terrified and solitary woman is seeking refuge on a dark and stormy night and violins screech shrilly in the background.  While it is not really grand enough to be a key to a kingdom, it is does have an allure about it.  If nothing else, it unlocks my imagination, setting it free to run, perhaps through the halls of a walnut-paneled mansion set high on a hilltop, with love and intrigue hiding in the shadows.

The simple act of picking up the key and fingering it renews its ability to unlock a door, but now the door could be anywhere, in any time or country and by any one of a thousand vivid characters.  An ordinary but now-old key has transcended its original pedestrian use, beckoning forth stories, creating images and songs with a simple blink of the mind's eye.