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Sometimes I'm struck by the smallest details imaginable. Today I went to the library to return my books, renewing the one I didn't finish reading. The woman performing the check-out moved steadily and methodically while engaging in occasional chat with a co-worker I couldn't see on the other side of the pillar. She scanned and sorted and then she reached inside my book, where I'd placed one of the two "Due Date" cards as a marker, removed it, replaced it with a card with the new due date, then fluidly closed and slid the book onto the counter and bid me good day.
As I watched her perform the movements, I came close to intervening, fearing she would just lose my place or would replace the wrong card. But I didn't, perhaps because I sensed she knew exactly what she was doing or perhaps just because I was transfixed with watching someone pay such careful attention to tiny details.
I was inexplicably moved by the situation. I walked away wondering if I would get misty-eyed if I continued to dwell on it for much longer.
I'm always taken aback by careful attention to detail. I don't expect it, I guess, perhaps a numbness made worse by working in a downtown area with constant movement and interactions of people yet persistant ignoring of actual existences. In a city of millions where you can disappear into nobody in the back of a train car or on a sidewalk, in a country of people who are fixated on themselves that reveals itself in everything from the economy to how we interact as drivers on the road (e.g. the recently reported rates of hit-and-run accidents in the city). So when I come across someone who has an extraordinary skill in paying attention to detail, I can be overwhelmed.
I feel this with people close to me in life, when I'm humbled by how closely they listen to what I've said. It's never the quantity of what's remembered, because frankly that can be scary if a person has such a large capacity in their memory, but more how we have an average sized bank of memories of the people in our lives, and sometimes what someone outside of me stores in theirs I don't even store in my own. Coming back to me months later and saying a conversation influenced them that I don't remember having. And vice versa. Except I'm used to the vice versa happening, because I've always had a crazy spongelike memory. It's gotten worse, partly with each year that passes, partly for my own measure of sanity. Remembering everything can cause copious amounts of anxiety.
I am giddy about my finds at the public library, which included two books by Trungpa, short story collection of Bunin with harder to find selections, and novel written by the author of the "Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About" website. I want to sit and read all of the books at once. I also went to Tower to buy the extended DVD version of The Two Towers (why did people even bother buying the other inferior one?!). Geez, if it wasn't for a porn shoot tonight, people might think I was becoming a big nerdy geek.
As I watched her perform the movements, I came close to intervening, fearing she would just lose my place or would replace the wrong card. But I didn't, perhaps because I sensed she knew exactly what she was doing or perhaps just because I was transfixed with watching someone pay such careful attention to tiny details.
I was inexplicably moved by the situation. I walked away wondering if I would get misty-eyed if I continued to dwell on it for much longer.
I'm always taken aback by careful attention to detail. I don't expect it, I guess, perhaps a numbness made worse by working in a downtown area with constant movement and interactions of people yet persistant ignoring of actual existences. In a city of millions where you can disappear into nobody in the back of a train car or on a sidewalk, in a country of people who are fixated on themselves that reveals itself in everything from the economy to how we interact as drivers on the road (e.g. the recently reported rates of hit-and-run accidents in the city). So when I come across someone who has an extraordinary skill in paying attention to detail, I can be overwhelmed.
I feel this with people close to me in life, when I'm humbled by how closely they listen to what I've said. It's never the quantity of what's remembered, because frankly that can be scary if a person has such a large capacity in their memory, but more how we have an average sized bank of memories of the people in our lives, and sometimes what someone outside of me stores in theirs I don't even store in my own. Coming back to me months later and saying a conversation influenced them that I don't remember having. And vice versa. Except I'm used to the vice versa happening, because I've always had a crazy spongelike memory. It's gotten worse, partly with each year that passes, partly for my own measure of sanity. Remembering everything can cause copious amounts of anxiety.
I am giddy about my finds at the public library, which included two books by Trungpa, short story collection of Bunin with harder to find selections, and novel written by the author of the "Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About" website. I want to sit and read all of the books at once. I also went to Tower to buy the extended DVD version of The Two Towers (why did people even bother buying the other inferior one?!). Geez, if it wasn't for a porn shoot tonight, people might think I was becoming a big nerdy geek.
