Magic With Strangers

You’re paying for milk.

The cashier says “how are you.”

You mumble “fine thanks” and wait, slack-faced, to swipe your credit card.

Then, milk in bag, you hurry back to your car and back to your real life as soon as possible.

With family, with friends, you are the real you.

But with everyone else… with that sea of clerks, cashiers, tellers, operators, receptionists, and waiters, you are the robotic consumer.

The cog in the machine.

Just another blank-faced man perpetuating the dehumanization of commercial life.

And so the ghetto lines are drawn.

You see all that transacting as dead spots in your life… something to be “gotten over with” so you can get back to true living, loving, laughing, creating.

But a true creator places no such limits on his art.

EVERY moment presents you with the opportunity to create meaning, joy, story… even if for strangers.

When you FORGO that moment… when you spill that opportunity to the ground, you not only lose the chance at creation… you lose your chance at reclaiming POWER as well.

You become slave to a dehumanizing system, allowing it to estrange us from each other unchallenged.

Why come home from errands dulled and dreary, chained to the robot script, when you could be shining as the sun, creating art wherever you go?

If we are all caught up in the machine of commerce, go gunk up the works.

Crazy it up.

Make them laugh, blush, gape.

Become the bright spot in their shitty-ass day.

Not to make friends…

Not be “be nice”…

But because every human interaction is an opportunity to bleed or amass power…

Because every human interaction is a chance to make magic in the human circus.