TOWER OF TOILET PAPER

I went to the Arcana Books on the Arts in Santa Monica and had an interesting experience. I had never been to that store before and was eager to visit. However, I was a little disappointed with what I found. Every single book in the entire store has a plastic cover on it. If you take out a book, you are supposed to let the employees but them back in order to prevent misplacement. It made me so that I felt bad for even being in the store, I didn’t want to touch or even breathe on the books. I was literally afraid to pick up and flip through the books on the shelves. I did appreciate how their selection of books covered a nice range of subjects from visual art to music to fashion, etcetera. There was such an incredible selection, and these books are meant to be enjoyed and are there to evoke emotion and inspiration, but how can that happen if you can't get past the cover?

As I was walking out, something caught my eye and stopped me in my tracks: a stack of individually wrapped rolls of toilet paper. They seemed so out of place to me. My impression on the store was that it was a pretentious art bookstore, and there they were selling rolls of toilet paper stamped with President George W. Bush’s face on each square. The pyramid of toilet paper made me laugh and it also gave a little bit of warmth to the store, giving it a lighter mood. It made me realize that the store wasn’t so sterile and hands off.