On People Watching

Linkai Jiang

 

 

On people watching:

I had the distinct pleasure of watching people being people. This endeavor is extremely labor intensive and should not be attempted without ample time and a nearly empty mind. Find yourself a seat, a corner, a counter, a cubicle, an elevated floor, or any physical space that would support your external appearance of calmness as you experience the inner nympholepsy of curiosity at work. Having something to nibble on would help you camouflage into the environment. You’ll fit in perfectly with the lunch crowd. Little do they know that you’re on a mission.

Let me emphasize: to get the maximum result please make sure that your mind is as near empty as possible. Remember when you were just born? Ok, you probably don’t remember it--and that is exactly how you want to be at the incipient moment of people watching. If it helps you, imagine a big white canvass, which keeps stretching to the edgiest edge of your mental horizon. Now you ask, “what am I supposed to do?” Well, keep stretching that canvass and see if something lands on it: an inkling, a movement, a touch, a color, a feeling, a texture, a shape, or a taste. See how cyan, magenta, and yellow flow in and out of each other. Feel how the strangest familiar objects glue themselves to the canvass and the puckish thoughts make various dents. Brace yourself, once all the right elements land on the canvass, a world effloresces.          

You think that was intense? I was just describing two seconds of the back of someone’s head. Imagine what would happen if he turns around.         

 

 

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