i see a stranger sometimes, just walking by, and it makes me think about what we don't understand. every once in a while, i wonder if our sense of what's normal is just too firm. we build our categories, our ideas of who belongs, and it all feels so certain. but how does it make sense that our kind of being is the only kind of being in the universe. the universe holds so many unknowns, so many ways for things to exist that we might not even consider. maybe what we consider strange isn't strange at all, just a different form of the familiar. maybe there are intelligences, integrated and living amongst us, just in ways we haven't learned to see. we think we know what life looks like, but what if it's right here, just beyond our focus?