I love this view, at once homey and exotic, a hipster modern remembrance of times long past – or maybe times that ne’er were: when I look at this I see a scene from the Bartimaeus* books.

Can you guess what you are looking at? Don’t answer suitcases, rugs, desk. Explain the why. The what’s it all for? Have a guess while you look at the photos, then scroll down below them for the explanation.

The full view.

Detail, looking left.

Detail, looking center.

Detail, looking right.

This scene was a window display, fleetingly, at an imported rug store on La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood, California. I am so glad I stopped to get these photos, because the store is gone now, vanished as quickly as it appeared. Out of business? Or transported? I like to think of it as thriving, Elsewhere.

* I refer to Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus trilogy, in which a precocious teen conjures a wisecracking demon to take on the magician power elite in a London that ne’er was. I lo-ove those books; in fact, they inspired me to try my own hand at writing fantasy…

(The topic of a recent WP Weekly Photo Challenge was contrasts.)