Pizzashop
After ordering my chicken roll I felt the impulse to grab my phone and process my email. Instead I let myself look around, bored. I noticed ornate lamps, an old pizzaman statue, the imagined lives of the two disinterested employees, and the multiple silos of spices in glass shakers. Each thing compounded into the next with associations and collisions of meaning, triggering something unsayable that you might call “a feeling.” (Is this what they’re referring to in that Black Eyed Peas song?) This only takes 10 seconds. It feels like I have access to awe-on-command, but often I’m just running background scripts. There’s a slowness and an intention required to see things outside of your preconceived schemas—to bypass your shortcuts of sight, and instead behold all things through twin lenses: of what the thing actually is, and what it might mean. And perhaps when you tap into that flash of mysticism, there’s an added meta-excitement, that you are—for just a moment—outside of yours illusions and ego games, a living being lost in a perceptual jungle-puzzle.