The stranger details in life and the smallest perfections can sometimes anchor my anxious brain in the present for a fleeting moment. Over the summer I was able to capture some pictures to represent a few of these “glitch in the matrix” sensations, so I decided to share below.

What mundane moments give you pause and remind you that you’re this living, breathing meat- and blood-filled mechanism run by a fatty, brilliant blob and a beating knot of muscles kept safe in a cage of bones along with these air-filled flaps that allow your fleshy throat and lips to mutter, to cry, to scream, to shout, and to sing?

1. A brand new, Pink Pearl eraser

It has been so long since I’ve written in pencil, and longer still since I have seen a NEW eraser, that grabbing one out of the supplies closet at work along with a golf pencil (the only wooden pencil I could find), reminded me of the luminous sense of possibility that perfectly new tools can evoke. It also reminded me of the childhood I spent earnestly committed to using only chunky erasers and no 2.5 pencils because I am left-handed and they smudge less.

I work in an office setting supporting college students. One day over summer I was walking along a hall created by a real wall and cubicle offices, and I saw this dude. I don’t know if he’s been there forever, or if he appeared recently. Either way, his playful, unexpected presence brings me a little bit of joy. I hope he doesn’t fall one day and get vacuumed up.

Though significantly less cheerful upon first notice than small graduation dude, my discovery of this odd fellow while on vacation was still pleasing in the sense that his strangeness shook me a little bit out of my day-to-day existence. He holds signs and sells furniture and mattresses. I hope he’s been in the family for ages and that great grandpa Mercutio carved him out of his favorite maple tree.

So many things could be said about this next image. For starters, seeing a reference to my mother’s (somewhat rare) maiden name in a town that we don’t necessarily have family in is always a little startling. Second, combining the idea of “maiden names” with the actual last name that happens to be “Mann” with a reference to a House of Brides on a sunny, quiet morning walk all burbles in the subterranean lagoons of my mind to create a particularly prickly sensation of personalized patriarchy itching across my skull. Though one day I a hope to get married in a demonstration of love and commitment, I never intend to visit a House of Brides for this purpose. If that means I end up wearing a dress from Macy’s, cool.

Still on vacation, we encountered an ominous sign. Though I know the context, I’ll leave that part out of the story. It’s more fun that way.