Birthdays are such a wonderful excuse to buy myself presents. Every year I allow myself the ineffable pleasure of buying something impractical simply because I find it beautiful. The objects do not have to be expensive, but they're always something I don't normally budget for: cut flowers, a hardcover book, a handcarved wooden frame.
Uh huh, you say, and what about your apartment full of impractical, beautiful objects? You didn't buy them all on your birthday. Well, no, that's true. I allow myself to buy something unusual on all my trips abroad as well. But listen, compared to everyone featured in Architectural Digest, I am the merest dabbler. These people spent their childhood allowances on da Vinci cartoons or Windsor chairs, and began dealing antiques from their college dorm rooms. I can't even dignify what I own with the word 'collection.'
I love the magazine, but I get a little sulky about the people in it. The whole notion of having someone design your interiors and buy all the knicknacks in it to give it a certain look seems alien to me. Every special object I own has a memory or a travel story associated with it. I wouldn't want fabricated memories.
Of course, the flip side is I can't bring myself to pay big bucks for something I know I could get cheaply if I went to that country myself. I have passed up some pretty things because it galls me to pay a 300 percent mark-up on inexpensive Guatamalan cloth, or Oaxacan painted figurines, or Indonesian jewelry. But that's my own little game to keep myself from spending money on fripperies when the cats are out of chow. I simply don't have the financial resources to fill a house with lovely objets d'art.
So what did I buy this year? A Malayan tapir. Not a real one, unfortunately, but a handsome plush replica. I got it at the San Francisco Zoo which is where I spent my birthday. I already have an anteater, so I needed something else for my South America group, and I really like tapirs. Although, and I realize this probably reveals something dreadful about the way my mind works, their snouts kind of remind me of penises. Sort of elongating and shrinking all the time, and looking very solid yet slightly squashy, and terribly questing if you know what I mean. And they're about the same size. I think. I've never been all that close to a tapir nose.
Maybe if I take up collecting tapirs they'll put me in Architectural Digest someday. Or maybe they'll just take me straight to the funny farm.
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