Observations

So, I'm writing this in the middle of the night on my cell and sending it to my email (in a picture message for the higher character limit). I have to do it now, and get the thoughts out of my head.

Today I started thinking that there are certain things in life that you just have to sit back and watch. Not like a good movie from the safety of your favorite chair, but more like... a car crash. picture this: You're second in line at a red light, and you can only watch as the car in front of you accelerates at suicidal speeds into the oncoming traffic. you can smell the burning rubber of the tires and hear the scree-CRUNCH and the music of broken glass and mangled metal. And It's already too late. And you can't do anything but sit and watch.

I'm watching a friend of mine walk to the edge of a cliff. She won't listen when we tell her there are other ways to the bottom, or that she could, at the very least, grab on to the passing para-gliders and get some help. No. She's convinced that walking straight off the edge of this cliff is the only way. I've screamed myself hoarse trying to talk her down, and I am not the only one, but she refuses to listen. She hangs her toes over the edge, shuts her eyes, and pretends not to hear us.

I'm starting to think she likes the Gothic beauty of a suicidal leap.

I'm one of those people who always ends up sitting out and watching. There are some small renovations going on in my basement right now, and as I went down today to check if there was anything I could do to help, I ended up sitting on the stairs and watching the men struggle with the awkward entertainment cabinet that was custom-built by the previous residents. I don't quite recall taking a seat on the step, but I did what I always do in cases like this—I sat, watched, and forgot I was doing so while I did it. What I mean to say is that, many times, when I find myself standing off to the side and observing something, I forget that I'm actually, physically there, taking up and sometimes getting in the way. I get so absorbed in the action I am watching that It's almost an other-world experience of some sort; I'm almost always entirely fascinated. So I just sit back and watch.

Maybe that's why we plop ourselves in front of the TV so readily, sucking up images of devastation in foreign countries and pretty news anchors in borderline-tacky clothing—because in all of us, there's this ingrained desire to sit back and watch.

After all, if we're the ones watching, then the bad things are not happening to us, are they?