Sing, o muse, of the Mall of America

The Mall of America is taking applications for a summer writing residency, which makes now a good time to question whether our collective taste for absurd mash-ups has gone too far. Is this an attempt to out-quirk the Amtrak residency, where writers typed on trains? What’s next – a sculptors’ retreat in a Chevron station? A poetry workshop at Ikea?

Maybe, but think about it: The people-watching alone would make easy fodder. Look – there goes a man in a plaid shirt, walking past Foot Locker into Sephora. He emerges with a small bag. The story practically writes itself.

Submit your residency application by Friday, and you could be selected to commemorate the shopping destination’s 25th birthday by spending five days writing while “deeply immersed in the Mall atmosphere.” (Nights are spent in a hotel, not sleeping on a department store mattress as I’d hoped.)

The Mall of America opened in 1992, the same year I graduated from high school, at the height of mall culture. In the 1980s, preteenagers like me took their first independent steps in parentless packs from the dressing rooms at the Limited to the Clinique counter at Macy’s.

My friends blew their babysitting cash on scatological gag gifts at Spencer’s, but I was drawn to the kiosks of colorful pencils and papers. I recall smoothing out $2 bills for an eraser shaped like a hamburger at the mall in Memphis when I was 12. As I beheld that rubbery green lettuce flouncing out from under the meat patty, I became fixated not only on its delightful ridiculousness – a food that’s not a food! – but on the fact that someone had imagined it and made it.

I placed this object on my dresser-top display alongside other items I’d obtained because my life seemed to demand them: a Sandra Boynton notepad, a small plush owl, a smiley-face keychain with no keys on it. I’d gaze over this showcase into my mirror as I got ready for school. Hello, world, I’m the girl with the hamburger eraser.

My family moved to Augusta, Ga., shortly thereafter – our fifth move in 13 years – and by the time we arrived in our new town that summer, I’d grown used to rolling with changes I had no control over. My mother arranged an introduction to two girls my age, a plan I accepted without hope or expectation. She dropped me off at the mall, and I soon found myself sitting with two strangers before a slice of Sbarro pizza too large for its paper plate, starting my new life in a food court. After lunch, we cruised the perfume counters, spritzing and waving. Should we go to Banana Republic? Oh, definitely. You like belts? I like belts! Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad.

I visited the Mall of America once. Some colleagues and I made a pilgrimage during a business trip from Atlanta to Minneapolis when I was flailing around at the software consulting company I’d gone to work for in my 20s as a lost liberal arts major. We considered it a must-do, like seeing the Golden Gate Bridge or Mount Rushmore. (It was “of America” – how could we skip it?) I didn’t buy anything. I already had my four interchangeable skirt suits and two pairs of low-heeled pumps. I had no idea if I’d ever find a way out of that job and into one that fit me better. I didn’t know what to look for.

Now my husband and I live in Nashville, and I rarely see groups of kids in the mall. My 11-year-old daughter would probably love for me to take her to Claire’s to get her ears pierced, but she has no interest in being dropped off to roam for the afternoon.

It may sound superficial to imbue the hunt for material goods with importance, to say shopping and what we shop for have some formative influence on our identities. But as King Lear said, “O, reason not the need.” With apologies to Marie Kondo, I’m fine with acquiring things for purposes other than that they might “spark” minimalist joy.

If you can find (and afford) an item or garment that helps you get from one point to another, go for it, whether that’s maternity jeans or anti-aging face cream or the artfully shredded top in the window at J. Crew. Do you really need that last one? Perhaps, if only to have it in your closet reminding you that the door to the life you once imagined as everybody’s favorite cool professor hasn’t closed all the way. And as long as you know there are still plenty of open doors, you can get up every day without panicking.

That a mall would host an artistic residency may seem hamburger-eraser silly, but mall as muse makes sense to me, and not just because of the convenient proximity of the writing desk to Panda Express. Consumerism and creativity aren’t such strange bedfellows.

Observe people in the act of searching, whether they get what they search for or not, and you will understand something about them. And understanding is as good a place as any to start, whether you’re writing a story or just living one.