Closing time.

Sometimes, in the last few minutes before closing time, when the fluorescent lights in the supermarket flicker just a little brighter and the staff starts sweeping the floor with a passive-aggressive smile as if they’re trying to subtly erase you, something wonderful happens. Not grand, not divine—but strangely intimate. You grab products without thinking, guided by impulse, memory, and a vague sense of “need.” And before you know it, you’re walking around with a basket full of objects that you didn’t choose, but that may have chosen you.

There, between the urge to 'get something quick' and the leftover junk on half-empty shelves, a kind of supermarket zen reveals itself. A state in which everything—every banana, every tube of toothpaste—carries a story. And maybe even… feels something.

My basket, put together in a frenzy of haste, contained, among other things:

• a carton of semi-skimmed milk, slightly sweaty, as if it was nervous about my refrigerator policy
• a can of tuna that radiated quiet superiority, aware of its long shelf life and omega-3 content
• a zucchini that looked suspiciously existential, as if questioning its role as a meat substitute
• a tube of toothpaste lying crooked in the basket, like a tired missionary of freshness
• a bag of paprika chips, bloated and confident, ready to disappear into an evening of weakness
• and three bananas, one of which looked like it had been through things you wouldn't understand

Together they lay there, a messy collection of matter with its moods. It seemed random, but felt charged. Each product, a small consciousness, a whisper in the cosmos of consumer society. I wondered: had I filled this basket, or had it revealed itself to me on a deeper level? Was I subject or object, buyer or medium?

Some people call it haste. I call it message intuition with a dash of cosmic drama.

And you? Do you choose your crackers, or do your crackers choose you?