What Mundane Things Fascinate You?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Pretty much any aspect of nature. I love fires and clouds and water, as previously mentioned. I also love plants, watching them moving around (slooooooly, but they do move!) doing thier plant thing in their plant world. Wind through a loose-leafed tree will fixate me for hours. Bugs. I love to watch them, but squeal like a little girl if one touches me. (Actually, when I was a little girl, I didn’t squeal, so I guess I squeal like a 31 year old woman.)

And my baby, in particular. I don’t understand why I’m so fixated on her, really. She’s just another person. But I could watch her hug and kiss her dollie a hundred times a night, and each time I’m all “squeeeeee! Oh, my god, she’s so cute! She’s being imaginative and stuff!” (She just started doing imaginative play, so maybe that’s it. Maybe it will wear off.)

22

“Almost the whole world’s asleep.
Everybody you know, everybody you see, everybody you talk
to. Only a few people are awake. And they live in
a state of constant total amazement.”

You people all rock, I just wanted to say that.

Mechanical timekeeping devices - quartz watches are boring but old tictic tictic things, I could watch (ha!) and fiddle with them for hours.

23

Trains. Railyards, trains, railroad tracks, railroad maps, everything railroad.

24

Birds. Their movements, their sounds, their unceasing birdiness. Wonderful critters, so very different from us.

25

When my son was about 4 or 5, he suddenly asked me one day, “Mom, how come all the birds on the electric wire are facing the same way?”

:eek:

Really? I never noticed that. But durned if he isn’t right, most of the time. What makes them do that? Wind resistance? Watching the same show (World’s Funniest Himans)? Looking out for predators? I have no idea.

Gave me a new appreciation of both birds and motherhood.

26

I’ve lived here in the frozen north for two winters so far, and I’m still fascinated by snow. I can spot the tiniest single flake and I get all giddy. Give me a snowstorm, and I’ll probably stay outside and freeze to death 'cause I’m too dumb to go inside.

I’m also fascinated by bras. Specifically, when women take their bras off… without removing their shirts. The topography of that manuever just boggles my mind.

27

The wave patterns formed in a polystyrene cup of coffe when you slide it allong a desk. You get a lot of stop-go friction that causes harmonic wave forms in the liquids surface that can become very visable.
The way Squirrels race around trees and seek to gain dominance over other squirrels by gaining the higher position whilst not being seen and then rushing the enimy squirrel from above.

28

Have you got hold of any rare-earth magnets yet? I hignly recomend them for us magnetophiles. That said, after doing the math required to study magnetism in a physics course I don’t think of magnetism as in any way mundane :slight_smile:

29

Ditto to maps and magnets.

Also: ants. Ants are the BEST.

And: violins being played en masse. When I was in high school, I was in a youth orchestra (I’m a flutist) and I could watch the violin bows going up and down all day. Hypnotic.

30

I second the vote for the hands of musicians, especially stringed instruments and guitarists. I could watch the left hand of a good guitarist all evening, absolutely entranced (in fact I have done). Not sure if this counts as ‘mundane’ though. People who learn to play the guitar really well are by no means doing something mundane, IMHO.

I love all the details of a byegone age you can see in old movies, especially British films (I’m a Brit) from the 40s, 50s and early 60s. It’s so distinct from today as to practically count as a different universe.

I grew up in the north-west of England in the 60s and 70s, which means I had endless hours to watch and enjoy rain. I still find it fascinating - the sounds, the patterns, the way it completely transforms a landscape (sometimes seemingly immediately), people’s reactions and responses, the sight of rain upon a lake, or raindrops on puddles, the sight of distant rainclouds approaching. And that bright, shiny, glossy world we are temporarily left with afterwards.

I find it fascinating that a large modern supermarket offers several thousand different products. Think of all the people and companies and processes and work that goes on somewhere just so that each one of those product lines can end up on the shelf, and I can just saunter in and help myself to whatever I want, without a moment’s thought.

The heat from the sun is pretty mind-blowing as well. Think of anything you’ve seen on Earth that is really hot - such as a blast furnace or a forest fire or a rocket launch. If you are one mile away from any of those, you won’t feel the heat. Yet we can feel the heat from the sun, and it’s 93 million miles away. Just try to imagine how big and how hot the sun must be.

Skin is amazing. I love the fact that it has all these clever built-in receptors and sensory cells for things like hot, cold, pressure, pain, humidity and so on. Plus it has just the right degree of flexibility. Plus our tactile sense is utterly amazing, and way beyond anything we can reproduce artificially. Plus when you rip or tear it, it just repairs itself!

31

As far as I am concerned “wireless” anything is fucking magic and amazes me to no end.

32

An Aquarium, the bigger the better!

I’ve never known anybody whose eyes were not drawn to one.

33

I like the way matches ignite. That sound they make and that disorganized-looking flare until it settles into the teardrop shape of the flame. I like that pungent sulfur smell right after.

I like to watch my toddler learn things. Just last night, he learned that he can be a comedian by putting an adult-sized shirt over his head and peering out at us through the neckhole.

I can also watch horses until the end of time. Even if they’re just standing around, they’re interesting as hell. The subtleties of their ear movements and their sounds and their foot stamping can keep me infinitely fascinated.

34

Ground hogs. I love watching them skitter back and forth, dipping their heads to pull a piece of whatever out of the ground, the pop their heads back up and take a look around, like they’re saying, “What? Did you call me?”

35

Geckos and other similar small lizards. There are a few in the bushes outside my window that will come up and drink dew or rain off my windowsill. I can zone out and watch one for ten or fifteen minutes, easy. Longer, if I’m playing my guitar or folding laundry or am otherwise occupied.

Hey…the people who like to watch guitarists: I’m very good. Come on over and watch me play the guitar while I watch lizards eat bugs. It’s a win-win scenario. And we can go get a beer afterwards. Watching bubbles in beer (especially nitro-tap beers like Guinness) is another endlessly fascinating thing for me to watch!

36

I love having a cat around. Every once in a while I’m completely gobsmacked by the fact that this is a whole separate independent little living being that can walk around and eat and drink and poo and have good moods and bad moods . . . I mean, yeah, duh, there’s also people around me all the time, and birds and bugs and all kinds of critters, but for some reason a cat is just the right balance of like me and yet unlike me that it breaks me out of my normal, mundane, almost solopsistic way of apprehendhing the people and animals around me symbolically and just being kind of amazed that all this biology stuff works.

Also, I could stare at the surface of the Moon through a telescope for hours. It’s the first thing I ever saw through a telescope, and I’ve looked at lots of other things that should arguably be more awe-inspring, but having a whole other world hanging right there where it feels like you could almost reach out and touch it… I never get tired of it.

37

When I was a kid we’d go to northern Wisconsin in the summer, I spent hours and hours watching dragonflies emerge from their larval thingies. The coolest ones were the size and shape of a silver dollar. They ended up being huge dragonflies – I swear you could hear their wings beating.

38

Diesel electric railroad engines. I had to cross tracks on the way from work every day and if I heard a train coming I’d try to be the first one at the crossing. My god the raw power! Especially if there were aux. engines with a long train.
Got my jollies everytime! (almost).
Steam engines were good too, but I haven’t seen one since I was a kid.

39

I could put a piece of food down on the ground and watch the little buggers haul it away for hours on end. Occasionally I’ll put my finger down to stop their little train and I’m just floored that they never seem to get mad or annoyed. They just go around.

40

Dogs. Dogs are goofy yet smart. Mine now knows the sound of cheese being removed from the refrigerator. She understands her name and about 30 other words/phrases, including cheese, walk, mommy, daddy, bad, come here, get down, outside, in the house, bed time, dog food, drink, etc.

But get her leash wrapped around a tree or a chair leg once, and there’s no possible way she can figure out how to undo it. Stupid mutt.