I watched this drunk crazy lady who regularly sits in the bus shelter where I pick up my bus to work Friday. She opened a ratty bible, the kind that is held together only by faith and the truly ugly vinyl cover, on her lap. She tossed four pennies onto the open pages, as if throwing the bones. It was a good deduction made on how she looked all around as she tossed those coins and murmured some debate with herself. Still, it was all guessing, and I was just getting more curious. Was this some schizophrenic pastime? Was it some folksy variance on bibliomancy? Was it just a nice way to see the copper discs fall prettily? Did the verse and the chapter the bible was open to matter?
I knew I could simply ask her what she was doing with the coins and the bible and why she was doing it. She'd talked to me before, and I knew she was relatively coherent. But I didn't ask. I couldn't ask. Well, I could, but that would ruin the mystery, wouldn't it? As a city dweller and pedestrian, I've seen many many odd things that have remained wholly remarkable because they have stayed unexplained. In the city, even the most mundane oddity gains this surreal majesty as perception disconnected from "reality." How strange would strange experiences be if they were understandable? How well would we savor the inherent absurdity in human relativity if we knew why exactly a drunk crazy lady three four pennies on a bible.