i wonder how many people read thoreau, thought he was a genius of a kind, and promptly forgot about him. i wonder how many books i've read that i thought were amazing but didn't really do anything about and now i can't really remember.

what i really wonder is why we have walk-in closets. and why they're full. and why we buy new stuff when the old's still perfectly good. you think maybe it's possible in this day and age of running gushing water and powdered detergents to live in 10 articles of clothing, no more? you think maybe that here in the land of paved sidewalks and grassy lawns 3 pairs of shoes might be more than enough?

i read that in the jesuit volunteer corps, you're obliged to live on no more than $40 a month. i wonder what kind of food i could get at the co-op for $10 to last me a week. and yet it's silly that i'd even think i'd go hungry.

someone has to sweat long and hard for each one of us to enjoy (or not enjoy) our fine standard of living. us college kids, we're all so broke with our converse shoes and our computers and our cell phones and mp3 players. us and our crappy cars. forced to live off of frozen entrees and cheap pasta and boxed cereal and greasy pizza and starbucks coffee. this crappy heated carpeted powered housing we're stuck with... really, we've got it so damn rough. if even half of the world could have what we have (which they can't, because we had it first and there's not enough to go around, and if you can afford a mansion on a hill and a vacation home in hawaii and a computer or two and a car and a college education for each of your kids, why shouldn't you grab it?), we'd need a second planet.