APPLES
(from "things that happened")
I was placing apples in rows on a counter. The rows were 5 apples long. The first four faced right. And the last faced left. They were Braeburn. In between the Red Delicious and the D'Anjou Pears. A woman with large breasts was a few feet away, putting peaches in a bag. I found myself looking at her breasts. I know it's pretty creepy and perverted but I couldn't help it. I was in a trance. I couldn't stop looking. Her breasts shuffled as if to suggest her awareness of me watching her. I looked up at her face quickly to see. She had merely glanced to her right. She hadn't seen me. I knew it was time to stop staring. I glanced downward and saw that there were many Braeburn apples on the floor.
POTATOES
The UC Cafe in Berkely. One would assume that only college students frequented this place but the first time I went in I saw an old man next to a window in a corner booth. He was arab or something and dressed like a broke pimp from the seventies. Well, he wasn't that old. Maybe forty something. He had thelook of one of those guys that could bend silverware with their minds.
I ordered french fires and an iced tea from an asian waiter, possibly Korean. I sat and waited. I noticed three other old people:
A really old looking white guy in a baseball cap tearing sugar packets and looking at his coffee
An old, slightly overweight woman playing scrabble with herself
And another old woman who was just eating, I assumed seeing as how I only saw the back of her head.
They were all sitting sort of spread out with no will invovled in their seating arrangement. The sugar pack man was one booth across and one booth over from the back-of-the-head lady, the scrabble lady was somewhat apart from the other two and the arab spoon-bending pimp was far off in his little corner. It was as if their seats were picked by a random number producing machine. The truly random will often have patterns in it because we as humans think of random as spread out ad therefore somewhat equal and harmonious. True randomness throws in balance to add to the unbalance.
So here they were in their booths. I was thinking maybe they could all get together and sit at one booth and, I don?now maybe play scrabble or something.
I got my fries and iced tea and left.
I went back there two or three days later and ordered french fries and an iced tea again. The same Korean guy took my order and sure enough, the spoon-bending pimp was in his corner booth. Suddenly I got this mental picture of him sitting there in the corner, umoving, while the world passed really quickly outside the window next to him, the cars passing by, the sun rising and setting, all really sped up like those nature videos on how spiders build their webs. Then I got this image of a nature show I saw once with a spider building its web all sped up. I got my fries and iced tea and left.
I came back the next week and the Korean guy is there. Before I have time to say anything he goes: "French fries and iced tea?"
I go "yeah," and sit down, thinking it a bit strange how I had only been there three times and I already had a "usual".
I looked over and saw the spoon-bending pimp. The usual.
I didn't go back there for a long while. I don't think I made a concious descision about it. Maybe subconsciously, I didn't want to fall into a routine. But consciously, I didn't mind. In fact, I was comforted by that little routine. The usual.
About a month later I went back. There was no spoon-bending arab pimp in the corner booth. There was no Korean waiter. There was just a friendly blonde waitress, a young college couple, and a guy in a fishing hat. It was like I was in a different resturaunt. The lighting was a little dimmer, and everything seemed closed in but more vacant. It was a generic diner scene but it lacked the same familiarity that the arabian pimp and the Korean waiter had. I felt kind of let down that I couldn't ask for my "usual". I was looking forward to saying it. I ordered french fries and an iced tea and sat down. It seemed like it was taking a longer time than usual.
I got my fries and iced tea and left.
There is a line between routine a ritual. The UC cafe was borderlining. I'm not sure what to qualify my relationship withtthe diner was.
It was a fleeting moment of sequence like a pattern in a group of randomly generated numbers.
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