Time to Burn

In an hour I will be watching The Hitchikers Guide to The Galaxy. Always fun to go see sci-fi movies on opening day. Until then I'll burn some time. Two things that hurt my brain today:

1. Bananas are a very strange food. Perhaps I am so out-of-touch with eating anything resembling "real" or natural food, that the site of an actual fruit produced an error in my hard drive. I caught myself staring at a banana today and thinking: I've never really looked at a banana before. You know, looked, really seen a banana. Sure I have peeled yellow squishy things and then shoved the soft innards in my mouth, but up until this point I had never really looked at one. How many things out there in the world am I not completely captivated by because I fail to look at it freshly--differently each time.

2. Our entire daily routines depend on what time we set our alarm clocks to go off. I randomly set my alarm clock for 7:27 a couple weeks ago and it hasn't failed, I see the same people at the same place each day. What really got me spooked was when I decided to hit the snooze button the other day and it threw my whole routine out of wack. I passed pedestrian A near the park instead of in front of the bus stop. Pedestrian B had already disappeared. It was upsetting.

On every street across our country, this same dynamic is played out, people bumping into one another each day. Some friendly, others grumpy; those in their own cell phone or iPod world. All the people I know in my life are classified in a category. Family, friends, co-workers, acquaintances. But then there are all those other people. The skinny caricature of a geek that marches down the street each afternoon with his man purse. The crotchety old fat guy that waddles past me on the way home from the gym. The checker girl at Fred Meyer. I smile at these people, I see them everyday, more than I see my own friends and family. Or the people who's blogs I read? How do I categorize these people. Our villiages are not what they used to be.