So I'm sitting down at my own temporarily personal iMac at the good old College Ave Computer Lab at approximately 1:30 am, and I'm doing my usual routine of ten minutes work/2 minutes staring off into space/ 30 seconds eyeing up the other people working, when something surprises me. On the computer next to me, some guy has my image on his screen. No, I don't know him. He's contemplating a facebook picture from last week's multipurpose party on 94 Central. Neither of us know the other, we're just random bricks in the gigantic Rutgers wall of illusion. I would say something, and it's almost as if under different circumstances I would be compelled to, but I realize that my body has become so used to occupying this position that I cant break the spell.
It brings up a lot of interesting questions, such as "what the fuck are we doing?," and "How did I arrive at this state." It seems like 3 year olds have more face to face interaction than undergraduate students in a big urban college. I seem to have lost any feeling of relatedness to this choatic swarm of people around me. Some days, walking to the dining hall, I play the game where if someone crosses my path I'll pretend like I'm looking at my shoe or a tree. "Say, is that a lightpost? How interesting." Other times I get fed up with my act and I decide to face whoever is coming toward me eye to eye, chin to chin without flinching. But then I realize that they also are struct by some fascinating object just off to the left as they walk by. I wonder what primitive people used to do when a group of seed gatherers crossed paths with a group of rabbit slayers. Did they say "whats up" in their native tongue? Or give each other high fives. If out of every three people I passed on the sidewalk one gave me a highfive, I would be a lot more content with my life.
