What do we shop at times? I deal in opinions on redeeming encores or unguided enterprises. We’re not so interested in dreams. But this morning I woke from a flash of such gruesome practicality I became distressed talking to lingerie and mere vapor in a sports-transition store. There was no deeper pretext or tortured prelude. I walked into this pleasant, really dark place decimated in distorted light. Dim lights. But I was in there casually shopping with others. It was a showroom like the first Under Armors where mannequins, staff, and customers matched up in comfortable, form-fitting shirts and sweats and some in jackets pulled an inch or two back, almost off their collarbone, not to flex but to suggest upper body development. There are steadfast outlines but nothing shows. We have eyes and the mannequins won’t move. That kind of carefully lunatic geopolitical emoji stow and store. That’s what I was thinking as I picked out five pairs of socks. A pointillist grey pair, two in enlarged, graduated chocolate pixels, and a couple of pairs in ink, one with a hint of an inkier poetic plaid-esque under. Everything was going to blend well with natural stuff. (Making new money hard to follow. The total came to under $300.) The wind always kicks back allowing us to translate sleep into discrete transparent overlays of desire, textured fantasy, aimless expectation. Shopping.