Being Kathleen Walsh A day in the mind of a California designer

摘要

DAYDREAMS ARE SERIOUS BUSINESS. It's three blocks from home to studio, but it's only six in the morning. So Kathleen Walsh walks Vinnie to the beach. Vinnie barks at a jogger, then sniffs at a prehistoric seedpod. "No, Vinnie," she says, snatching the pod. A shimmering clatter rains out of a nearby beach house. Beer cans rattling into barrels recall her waitressing days. If something happened to her design business, she could wait tables again, if she had to. Flicking seeds, she thinks of the vacant building in the gentrified downtown, her dream store. What she wouldn't give. But it's so expensive. She tosses the seedpod and hears a volleyball thumped by the Amazonian women who populate Hermosa Beach. Vinnie noses driftwood. A man says hello. Kathleen worries she looks homeless, with her patterned sundress and her scrappy little Chihuahua mutt and her driftwood. The man passes, she pockets two pieces, and as she walks uphill, past her dream store and toward her tiny studio, she fingers the driftwood, which is forked into the satisfying shape of a wishbone.