character study by the light of the moon

My girlfriend spilled the sugar dispenser on the table about half an hour ago. Since then we've been making little patterns, unintentionally: the waitress refills my coffee, so I slide it closer to the edge. My girlfriend adds more sugar to hers. I add cream. We take a sip. She adds a little more sugar. And it leaves these little lines and circles behind.

I don't know if she's noticed, but I bet she has, which makes me question the whole thing. I only started watching just now, and it's the sort of process that would be really fascinating if I thought it were actually random. But now she reaches for the cream and is she doing that for the sake of the pattern? Does that change anything? Does the intention change the outcome?

She doesn't see patterns, though. She only sees beauty. And there's beauty in simple things like little swirls of sugar on the table or spirals of cream in her coffee, I guess. I'm just so much more interested in patterns, in meaning. It's so intricate. The smallest variable can change the whole thing. What does that line tell us? What does it mean? And maybe she's just making pretty shapes, and does that make it meaningless or can it still tell us something?

Isn't there more she could be doing?

She asks me if there is something wrong and I tell her that everything is fine. She tells me she wants to go dancing, and at the very least there is something we can agree on.