East. West. Best. Everything Else.

Today I was feeling very west-coastish; is that an adjective?  For some reason I was longing to drink a JJ Bean chai latte and walk the coast of Vancouver, Seattle or Portland.  All day I was craving Portland's wonderful city transit and good recycling program, and Vancouver's unceasing dreariness.  Sometimes part of me is upset and how my body limits me to being in one place at a time.  I long to experience all that life can possibly offer me. I want to know all people, and see all places, and experience all culture. I want to hear the best music and smell the best smells. I want to take in all of life's rawness. Even if it hurts; part of me wants to know the pain that other people experience. I want to love. And not just love for my own sake, but experience selfless love. I want to jump off the tallest things and swim into the depths.  To experience all seasons without waiting or to get on a train and not know where it's going. To sleep on a stranger's couch. To lie on a beach in the middle of a snowstorm.  To drink the world's best coffee or smoke the best tobacco.  To eat cheap donuts and talk to uninteresting people; to experience the mundane but see it's beauty. I want to sit in a lecture of every university. I want to experience the stereotypical - to watch the american past time, to skate in central park, to fall in love in Paris. 

In some senses movies have cheapened these things for us; we will never have that perfectly lined up moment. But yet, I think they have enriched these things too. They place in us a longing for experience, and the feeling that comes with that experience, that we would probably never otherwise dream of. How sad is it that we have to let someone else do our dreaming for us?