Waiting.

    Any period of time—a week, a weekend, a few hours—is, in memory, reduced to its most pronounced features. When you tell someone of an event or are asked to recall what you did last week, you comb your memories for these points of interest. If memory is a landscape, these points of interest are peaks, mountains punctuated by valleys. But what of these dips in your memory, the valleys connecting the mountains?

    Think about the times you you were doing nothing but waiting. Think of the times you have waited and constructed a little game for yourself or developed a connection with an object just to pass the time, only to forget about it as soon as you move on; think about the times you've waited for a friend outside a bathroom; think about the times you slept over at someone's house, but woke up before them and lay waiting; think about the times where you've waited for the bus, or waited on the bus; think about sitting in that waiting room for whatever appointment you scheduled.