On the ceiling of the grocerystore

If you place loudspeakers above a stage or movie screen, it is fairly certain that the audience will not notice that the voices are coming from dozens of feet in the air. The reason for this is that our ears are located on the sides of our heads, rather than on chin and forehead. We just aren’t very good at locating sounds vertically.

While driving to the grocery store, I began wondering, if maybe, I might be missing a lot in my vertical plane of vision. After all my eyes are side by side. Although some early mornings they seem to want to position themselves into a scalene triangle. As I walked into my customary grocery shopping establishment, one of those warehouse-like behemoths, I took a moment to really study the “Vertical Plane of the Moment”.

Looking down was not terribly interesting. Dirty linoleum has few charms.

Looking up was much more startling. I realized that I had never looked into the vast space above me, although I had been coming to this store for years. It was covered with an upside down forest of steels supports, wire, cables, conduits, and lighting fixtures all painted a yellowish white color. It may be have been painted white originally, but had since developed an unsavory yellow "patina". The top of the ceiling was made of undulating sheets of steel that seemed to be coated in gravel. The roof supports made endless rows of xs. The perfectly straight lines of lighting fixtures seems to converge into the distance resembling the fighter launch tunnels on the Battlestar Galactica. The whole things is festooned with many, many security camera cunningly disguised as large, black plastic balls.

I supposed I should have had a moment of enlightenment. Instead, my first thought was, “How do they clean up there?” Surely those tangled surfaces had to be luxury condo living for dust, debris, and dead insects.

There are some things you just shouldn’t think about when you’re out picking up a tub of cottage cheese.