Portraits of Brief Encounters: More Knives

One of the tenets of people watching is the search for answers to those wildly inconsequential questions that float on the surface of our daily tedium like lily pads, this particular one decked out in Juicy Couture. Where is that woman going? Does the small dog in her purse have no legs, requiring it to be carried as so? In light of our struggling dollar has she reverted to a bartering system and is on her way to trade the legless pup for a new iPhone case? That would be fair across the board.

The thing I don’t wonder while people watching, however, is what people are thinking. I don’t want to know what’s lurking behind those eyes as her paperweight pooch yips and yips while she thumbs through her phone. Or what the man sitting across from me on the Skytrain is thinking as he watches the woman and her dog, adjusting and readjusting his crotch until it reaches a turgid state of perpetual unbalance. The reason for my ignorance is simple: their thoughts would be too easy to take out of context and wouldn't provide any proper narrative, because I’ll admit, as I sit watching the man watch the woman watching her phone, what I’m thinking is, I should really get more knives.

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