Early evening blogging. I almost never sit down and type now.

I just took a walk to the local grocery store, just a few blocks down the street. I was a little foggy-headed...insomnia last night, lots of caffeine this morning, class all day, mid-afternoon mental haze. It was raining lightly.

No thoughts in my head. Except dinner, perhaps, since that's why I was going to the store. For the most part, though, I just walked quietly down the street, absorbing everything around me.

Birds chirping. Runners getting their exercise before sunset. Lots of traffic, still. Pause, wait for crosswalk signal. Go. Smell of bread coming from the Subway on the corner, loud car going by, people walking with flowers toward the hospital one block east. Man walking dog.

It felt like I was in a movie, experiencing the world around me without really interacting very much with it. I walked through the store, picking up what I needed, but in an oddly detatched sort of way. Without day-to-day stress on my mind, I became strangely interested in each aspect of my shopping experience, mostly just regular little questions.

What sort of bread should I buy? How much cereal do I need? I think salmon is for dinner tonight. Must buy onions. Yum, chocolate milk. Buy that too.

But that was it. No concerns about the complexities of dinner, no thoughts of jobs or classes or responsibilities, not the traffic or the rain or the upcoming tasks I had to accomplish. Just me in that moment. And I wasn't working or trying to maintain this feeling; it just sort of washed over me.

And I enjoyed each little bit of it. I slowly walked back from the store, feeling the rain, seeing the puddles, and enjoying the peacefulness. The three blocks back to my apartment probably took 10 minutes.

Maybe this is what "stopping to smell the roses" really is.