Imaginary Museums
This is Shel Silverstein for adults. But not like “for adults” with an “only” tagged at the end. I just mean that the content of Imaginary Museums — this short story collection (?? microfiction ensemble ??) by Nicolette Polek — is akin to that sneaky boa constrictor eating you in Where the Sidewalk Ends…but actually in the case of Imaginary Museums it’s a Doberman that is now wearing your clothes. (For example!) There’s a lot that feels mundane, but in a surreal way. You know when you go the grocery for one item but buy everything but that one item? Or you know how with some it can be like “I don’t care — what do you want to do?” and then you do nothing but both parties are wistful for doing that thing? I mean like that, but not totally because they all feel like short blips of “I had a dream and I was in my house but it wasn’t my house and I was with you but you were actually a teenager. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN?!”
But then there’s a lot that’s quite fantastical such as trapdoors to different, possibly non-existent places and jumping out of airplanes. (That particular bit is from the last entry, “Love Language,” and I’m enthralled by it.) And then there’s the stuff that made me laugh like the opener to “The Seamstress.” (“On Monday my seamstress decides to give up people.”) Or the opening entry, “The Rope Barrier,” about a woman who “invested in a rope barrier, with a green velvet rope, which she carried around in her backpack like a tripod…She assembled it when she sat down on the subway. She assembled it at work when she responded to emails…The woman brought the rope barrier to functions. If she was seated next to someone she didn’t like, she put it between their chairs. When she ignored phone calls, she assembled it as a symbolic gesture.” (lolol can I have one?)
I can’t really say if you’d like Imaginary Museums or not. If you happened to read Homesick by Nino Cipri (likely no) or Seven Empty Houses by Samanta Schweblin (more likely), I think you’ll like this. If you know me and think that my humor is sometimes confusing or a liiiiiitle too off-the-wall, then maybe you won’t. (If that is the case, do not be surprised if I whip out a lil’ rope barrier.)
originally published on instagram