The Power of the Imagination

Today was a London day.  As I walked several blocks through Uptown Charlotte, I looked at the gray sky, felt the damp in the air, and kept my hands safely tucked in the herringbone coat which I bought on a similar day nearly two years earlier from a second hand store in Covent Garden. 

With the stones around me gray from wet and the air tasting like snow, wrapped in all my London trappings, I pretended I was walking to my Bloomsbury flat on a Sunday evening, when the crowds of walkers were not quite so thick.  I squinted my eyes, trying to make my vision see a different city, thousands of miles away.  I pretended the accents I was hearing were British in that appealing, lovely way that makes even curses sound like compliments – not the thick southern accents I’d grown used to but never fond of.  I forced my legs to take the long strides of someone who walks everywhere – using them as modes of transportation, not the operators of the transportation vehicles.  I pretended the windows I passed held musty old coffee shops next to chic fashion outfitters – always an intriguing juxtaposition.

And if the streets had just been a little narrower, the people a little more populous, the traffic lights a little less obvious, maybe, just for a moment, I could’ve tricked myself into feeling that I really was in the city that captured my heart four years ago and never let go. 

Finally, I admitted defeat and gazed, misty eyed, at a bright red Bank of America sign. 

Just another day in Charlotte.