stop & think

WHEN I stop and think about it, I find the following things quite unnerving:

Canned Food: I seem to think about this most when eating canned green beans, which I love. My mother almost always served canned green beans with spaghetti because my father's mother did this and it seemed like a convenient tradition to follow. Invariably, mid-bite, it will strike me how odd it is to be eating a plant in the first place--something that started as a seed, a living thing. All those cells with cell walls multiplying up through the soil under the farmer's eye. Then: stranger still, that someone took this green bean, cooked it, and locked it a way in a metal container so it could sit on a shelf for a long long time before the lid's pried open and the contents are re-heated and served. The mason jars of peaches, tomatoes, beans, pickles, jam my grandmother and I put up every summer don't incite this reaction at all. There's just something about all that food, wrapped in metal, sitting on shelves across the world that gets to me.

The beach: Hmm. What a beautiful day. Isn't the sun lovely and look at those waves. This is a great book and I'm so happy to be here, lying in warm sand. Wow, there sure is a lot of sand. What are all those statistics about the number of grains of sand vs. stars in the sky? Maybe there's too much sand. And there sure is a lot of water, too. My arms feel funny just thinking about treading water long enough for someone to attempt a rescue, should I get swept out to sea. The water just goes on and on and on until suddenly, you sputteri and stagger on to the shores of Japan. And everyone is just lying here, almost naked, in all this sand, on the edge of a vast expanse of water filled with treacherous creatures. I think I need to go home now.

It makes me very nervous.

Famous people/saying goodbye: One time I was at a very swanky, intimate party with the governor of the state. He was working the room, shaking hands, making small talk, asking intelligent questions. I was on the far side of the room, by the grand piano, standing with a friend. The governor kept getting closer and closer. People were strategically positioning themselves in his path but he was coming right towards us. I couldn't take it. I ran out of the room, right as he was turning to talk to us. This has happened repeatedly with other people of major/minor celebrity status and often times, even with friends. When it's time to say goodbye after an afternoon together, a drink in the evening, or even after bumping into each other on the street, I always think that I can handle it but I never can. For some reason, my desire not to be awkward is my very un-doing--illiciting supremely strange behavior.

For the record, I have no hang-ups about bugs, hotel beds, or commitment, though.