A lot of my life feels, to overuse the empty cliche of my generation, random. This randomness operates at both the macro and micro levels -- my academic and avocational interests; the clothes and jewelry I acquire and wear; my inability to properly descend or ascend a staircase, because I'll suddenly, inexplicably, last-second decide to take two steps rather than one, inevitably losing my balance and looking like a flailing pinwheel-armed idiot.
That's why I'm so fascinated by people who seem immanently ordered, exuding a soothingly coherent stability and scientific repeatability in everything from folding a shirt to eating a meal. I like to observe these people as they undertake some mundane task and mentally record the steps and their sequence. Sometimes, I do this to steal the script and later, secretly, replicate these sequences in situations I find particularly perplexing (dealing with waitstaff/store clerks/bartenders springs instantly to mind). But I also just take childish, gleeful pleasure at the elegance of a particularly ordered performance, wherein every detail is invested with infinite precision and care. I'm sure the observed parties would be surprised by the joy these undoubtedly unconscious, mechanized actions bring to me, and it's possible that they would see their reliance on rigidity not so much therapeutic as neurotic. But like the crucial role that nymphs or angels play in the fantasy life of dreamy pre-teen girls, these mythical ordered beings, leading lives so completely alien to mine, are absolutely essential to my view of reality. It's nice to get the occasional visitor's pass into their world.
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