When a woman finds her purse stolen, she retraces the steps of her eventful day only to realize that the encounters, and her life as a whole, are empty and purposeless.

In a series of commentaries on the human condition — life, truth, happiness, death — a spinster sister takes in her dead sister’s children; a man is entranced by the endless waves which roll and crash in the ocean; a carpenter wrestles with the burden of being everyone’s confidante; a dying railroad crossing watchman shares a simple but complex wisdom.

A day in the life of an ordinary family is complicated by secret thoughts and feelings as everyone occupies themselves with the task of watching the others.

Knowing that some things happen only once in a lifetime, a man walking down a street is convinced that he sees the girl of his dreams and wonders if fate is telling him to leave his wife.

In a small town, a resident watches as the people and place change. He recounts eight seemingly disparate stories, but the town connects them all.

A man's lonely life focused on the pursuit of reason and music leaves him questioning what more there may be in the lives of other people and of religion.

After he is kicked out of his house, a husband spends his days sleeping under a flowering pear tree in the front yard, his wife hatefully observing.

When a young boy witnesses an odd event from the window of his small-town house, he begins to doubt the stability of the world around him.

A man considers his daily life in a strange manner and waits for dusk so that he can see a fantastical city that is only revealed in the dark.

A man reflects on the loneliness of his childhood home, where his family would fervently clean the house every Saturday for guests on Sunday who would never show.