Notes from the Wrong End of Life
Xmas is hell….
In the frosty kingdom of the retail realm, there exists a special circle of Yuletide hell. The London department store in the Christmas season. It’s a locale where jolly melodies play on a never-ending manic loop. Aisles become festive obstacle courses, and shoppers morph into determined and dizzying devils on a mission. Welcome to the zesty madness that transforms formerly serene havens of consumerism into a tumultuous tinsel-laden hellscape.
The kaleidoscopic landscape of the department store during the Christmas season is akin to an acid trip through peyote-laden realms of festive chaos. The grasping denizens of this world lure you to part with money you don’t have for things you neither want nor need. But it is so pretty and once your brain is peeled away by the lurid landscape that is the department store you are doomed to a festive frenzy of consumption.
This is a hellscape of twinkling lights and jingling bells, where floor after floor is transformed into a labyrinth of consumerist nightmares. The shelves, adorned with gaudy decorations and discounted wares, feel like the halls of a surreal winter purgatory. As I navigate through the chaos, I encounter demons in the form of overenthusiastic salespeople, each one trying to lure me into their festive traps.
As you weave through the aisles, visions of flat-screen TVs and discounted sweaters frolic in your head. Have a care for these festive lanes become a deceptive labyrinth designed to entice you into a purchasing frenzy. ’Tis the season of giving, and by giving, we mean giving your hard-earned cash to the retail overlords.
Clothing sections become bewitched forests, each coat and scarf a mystical Medusa vying for your attention. As you journey deeper, the garish patterns and textures create a hallucinatory waltz of fabric, inviting you to lose yourself in a frantic tango of consumerism.
As you wander this surreal dimension, the reality around you warps into a vibrant tapestry of colours, sounds, and illusions, blurring the lines between the tangible and the fantastical.
With the echoing strains of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” shimmering in the air like a cosmic mantra. Each note sends shivers through the fabric of reality, transforming mundane aisles into psychedelic portals adorned with tinsel-garlanded traps
Navigating through this maze becomes a mesmerizing odyssey. A journey without a beginning or destination. Sequined sweaters and lurid lifestyle goods turn into surreal entities, their forms undulating like cosmic waves like intergalactic sledges of twinkling trivia. You glide through the aisles with a mind of your own, responding to the cosmic energies that permeate the space.
In this altered state of consumerist consciousness, the department store becomes a cosmic theatre, and each shopper participates in a grand, chaotic spectacle. The gifts in your hands are not just material objects but artefacts from a trek through the surreal dimensions of holiday capitalism.
Every step is a dance macabre with the absurd. The products, once mundane, have mutated into bizarre artefacts of the season, each demanding my attention with an urgency bordering on the supernatural. It’s a place where the quest for the perfect gift becomes a descent into madness.
Exiting the store feels like an escape from a fever dream. The cold winter air provides a momentary reprieve from the sensory overload within. I emerge from this hellscape with nothing in hand.
The street outside is filled with frenzied shoppers and chaotic traffic and then I find the final circle of this festive inferno. Crowds of people are held stationary outside the steps down into the subway station as it's too busy to let anyone else inside. They wait like empty souls to be devoured by a gaudily decorated underworld.
Thanks, but I’ll walk.
