i spent far too long looking at Muji products in the MoMA store today. (singing, on the way there, that well known classic: 'MoMA, just killed a man'.) what is it about all those clean lines, those clear soft plastics, those brown bound notebooks, those simple designs which has me and many other purusers perusing? i emerged fourteen bucks and nine cents later. well, eight cents. the shop assistant let me away with it. never let it be said moma is a money-grabber.
i also spent four hours in a diner. Googie's on 2nd and 78th. I had a brown cow, man. a Coke float, to you and me. but this was no ordinary Coke float. the brown foam on the top was a sight to behold. it was two inches high and had a creamy texture words cannot come close to describing. reaching the long silver spoon into the plastic tumbler full of brown foam to find lumps of vanilla ice-cream amidst an aspartame infested sea had me back, aged eight, at The Chuck Wagon in Portrush, a greasy-floored cafeteria which showed Tom and Jerry cartoons on video screens on every floor. the Northern Irish Coke float brought a sparkle to my world during one of the many magical summer i spent on the north coast of ireland, thanks to mum's decision to take us there for three weeks of the holidays. those were enchanted days of beaches and ice-creams and sea air and CSSM and wide games and new friends and crazy golf and sandy sandwiches...and windbreakers, which my mum would erect in fortress-like fashion around our maroon coloured ford estate, while i would wriggle into my swimming costume on a blustery july afternoon before hop, skip and jumping my way into sub-zero seas.
bizarre though it seems, the brown cow took me back there. vanilla flavoured memories floating on a dark sea. there's something about muji...and memory...and moma...and mum...and me...and the miracle of the american diner.
