Better than that

Why do we think that if we shop at Target, and have lunch at Panera, and get coffee at Starbucks... that we're so above the lifestyle of shopping at Walmart, and having lunch at McDonald's, and getting coffee at the convenience store. I'm just saying, we should challenge the false lines that are drawn for us.

I was reading something recently about how now instead of being trapped flipping burgers, thousands are trapped making mochas and lattes. We feel it's a step up but really... well I'm not going to say it's "bad" - it definitely isn't anything that deserves a blanket judgment like that, and life is what we make it - but we are kidding ourselves to think that a person in that type of retail or food service is better than someone in another similiar position.

On a somewhat-separate-but-not-really note, I've always thought it would be so cool if I could just get a tour of all the homes in my immediate neighborhood. You have all these totally different home settings and families and structures and scents and foods and cultures all existing inside four-walled domiciles, and they never interact with each other. It is wild. And being in any one of those houses or apartments or even just one room that is not familiar to me, would give me a totally different outlook on life. This is something I'm always struggling to say but never finding the words to articulate it. Something like that changes my perspective so drastically, and life itself - life entirely - looks and feels and is different. It is so crazy. And for me, the thing I'm always trying to do is capture the best moments. Which probably explains my over-fixation with autumn. Fall is to me like the best drug. Something about the cool air and the sunshine, something about the change, and the return to a safe-feeling schedule, something about fall makes me unimaginably high. That's just one setting or factor that gives me this life-is-grand feeling. I wish I could capture them all and live in them forever. They're so fleeting it's like I can't even really name or identify them - except for a few, like fall... or certain songs... or certain smells... I know them when I'm in them, but apart from them, I'm always kind of grasping for this vague environmental/sensory shift that makes my whole life seem different. I can't explain it. Hopefully someone has a clue as to what I'm talking about.