small town america...

So I just watched this movie titled "The Straight Story"; a heartfelt tale about an old man and his journey to rekindle his relationship with his estranged brother. Emotionally compelling and visually stunning but that's not my point.

While I was watching this movie I kept thinking back to all the small towns that I have passed through on my journeys throughout the past year and about the magnitude of the void that exists between myself and everyone in them. So my new goal, after I am able to dig myself out of this rut - which, by the way, is going really well as a result of my new perspective - is to take a trip, maybe through the northern and midwestern states this time and make a concerted effort to stop at one town per day and meet at least one person who is willing to tell me, not their entire life story, but something substantial that will help me understand where they come from.

I don't really expect anything to come from it but I think the desire to embark on said journey is borne from a romanticized notion of small town America which I seem to have recently developed. I see all these little towns on Google maps, and I am absolutely fascinated by them. Take for instance, Scobey, MT population 1,082. I look down on Main St. and 1st and can only imagine the ideal small town interactions that take place there on a daily basis. It doesn't matter if something does or doesn't happen, because life just happens in those places. People are born and they come and they go and so it goes.

I spent most of my life in suburbia and the rest in transience. I hope I am not looking for a mundane lifestyle in the midwest. I think I look at these places with the an unique mixture of intellectual curiosity and voyeuristic satisfaction that comes from the knowledge that I do not have to relegate myself to a confined existence such as that. Despite the obvious condescending tone of the previous statement, I realize that at the end of the day it can only be beneficial to reflect upon the merits of that existence as it compares to mine and I think that is all I'm looking to do.