serendipitous musings

Today, as I was walking home from work at about 7pm, (and it being a nice warm June day and still light outside) I saw a purple parachute in the sky, not too far away. (somewhere between me and the mountain) and as I was walking and looking at the parachute, i wondered where he/she had jumped from. and since the parachute was purple, i assumed that the parachutist was in the sky for recreational purposes and not because their plane was crashing, and for whatever reason, the combination of the blue shy and the purple parachute and the sunshine on my shoulder (since I was facing east) (not unlike the John Denver song) and the thought of that random stranger floating through the sky just for the fun of it made me feel serendipitously happy.

When I got home, I decided to do some long-overdue grocery shopping, so, i got in my car and turned west - facing into the evening sun- and my windshield was quite dirty-since I only wash my car when I go on dates and that hasn't happened in the last few months- made it so that I couldn’t see because of all the glare on the dirty windshield - so instead of going west to my usual grocery store, Macey’s, I turned south at the first intersection and headed to Allen’s - the only grocery store that can be reached without going west. I pretty much never go there... but that sunset and my dirty windshield forced me out of my routine.

So, with my routine disrupted, I wended my way among the aisles of the unfamiliar grocery store, making impulse buys since I couldn’t always find my regular items - for instance, in my Macey’s routine, I always skip the aisle of chips and other junk food snacks because I don’t want to buy unhealthy things. but since I didn’t know where I was going, I found myself in the chip aisle and purchased a 99 cents bag of cheese puffs - because I saw the price tag and thought "what, nothing is 99 cents anymore. even though I never buy unhealthy snacks, its just 99 cents so what the hey."

As I got into one of the two checkout lines that were open (Allen’s is not a very busy store) I recognized the guy in front of me as an old friend who I hadn’t seen in some time. So, I talked to him, and I talked to the middle-aged cashier lady - for some reason. (You never get beyond tedious small-talk with cashiers at Macey’s, or Smith’s, or Wal-Mart – the kind where they ask you how you are doing today because it’s their job to pretend they care, and you say that you are doing “good” because it would be rude to say “just ring up my groceries please.” But being in Allen’s makes you feel like you are living forty years ago in a much smaller town, so it happens. Maybe it’s just because the checkout is so slow and there’s no one behind you.)

I got home, and opened up my bag of impulse cheese puffs. They were “Payaso” brand, which is Spanish for clown – one of those brands that you’ve never seen before. and they had a picture of a laughing clown on the front. I ignored it. And then a thought came to me – the thought lasted only a second, and it went like this “hmm”.
Now that, of course, means nothing to you, but my brain and I have been working together for twenty-five years so I understood it perfectly, and what it meant by “hmm” is something like this: why did this tiny, no-name brand bother to hire an artist to make a clown drawing, and then pay to have it printed on their bag when nobody’s even going to give it a second glance. Their customers don’t care about branding – they only buy the product because its 99 cents. Besides, nobody actually likes clowns and many people actively hate them with surprising vehemence.” It’s a good thing my brain doesn’t have to formulate sentences in English for me, because if it took as long to think it as it did for you to read that, I would have already gotten bored and lost the train of thought before it finished. But what I actually thought was “hmm” and I picked up the cheese puff bag and looked at the mascot clown again.

Looking closer at the clown, while it wasn’t a photo-realistic drawing, it was different from other clown mascots I’ve seen… I’m used to two types of portrayals of clowns… the one you find on things marketed to babies- cartoonishly drawn, round head, cutesy, - or the psycho knife-wielding horror-clown, if you know what I mean. This drawing looked like the face of an actual, middle aged man with vaguely Mediterranean features who had painted himself up as a clown, stuck a fake nose on, and was grinning. You could see his real eyebrows underneath the painted-on-giant clown eyebrows. The grin was too wide to be natural.

So, I thought another “hmm” and this one was something along the lines of “real people actually become clowns, why? Either they don’t have many other socio-economic options, or they really, really want to entertain other people, or both. And in either case, how do they feel knowing that some people actively hate them, and most other people find them slightly annoying, and/or ignore them?” and then I wondered if the huge artificial grin on the face of the clown was there because he was trying too hard to make other people like him, or if he was grinning on the outside to mask the fact that he was crying on the inside. Or maybe he was just putting everything he had into his performance, whether or not it would be appreciated by anyone else. No matter what the reason was, there was a definite pathos in it.

Then I thought about how when I am walking somewhere, if there is a street performer, be it a clown, or a mime, or even just someone playing an instrument: somebody trying really hard to get people’s attention, and it makes me feel awkward, and I avoid eye contact, cross to the other side of the sidewalk and hurry past, and so does everyone else, and yet, the person continues, as the crowds part around them, and I don’t understand why they keep trying but they do.

Then I thought about how there are people I encounter in my life, and a few examples came to mind, who are like those street performers. Some who have annoying personalities, some are very socially inept, some wear strange clothes or makeup, some always want to talk about their dramatic problems that they’ve created for themselves. What they all have in common is that they are obviously crying out for attention and yet either I ignore them or am annoyed by them. And I thought to myself that I should clap for the street performer and give him a dollar or two whether or not I actually enjoyed his performance, just because he’s trying so hard to reach me.

Guitar Hero?

Today in church, i thought to myself that "guitar hero" should be renamed "guitar poser".

and on the subject of guitar hero, here's a website of a guy to make fun of.

http://www.guitarherobrokemyknee.com/story.cfm