the other

there's a cloud creeping up on me about to surround me, envelope and become me.

i realized some things about my life today. one: that i live somewhat isolated from a whole other order and working of life, of people and processes. and i believe myself to be a man of the people, that i care for all people, the poor and destitute, the working class - because I have worked to serve others who are in need. but i am not who i believe myself to be. yes, i have in my work life done much for community development and serving the people but i have always lived separate and in my own time rarely engaged that realm. I have for the most part only had friends who are just like myself: college educated, from well-to-do middle class families and with decent paying jobs. I spend my time in hip bars and cafes and dimly lit restaurants – occasionally venturing into the cheap ethnic establishments to take advantage of the low price and "authenticity" – doing all this with people who are just like me. But that's about the limit of my engagement: tourism.

What am i getting at here? Am i classist because i've been blind to my own class - just going along with what I know, what's just like myself? And why am I like this? Is the determinate factor economic or genetic? What separates people into these different but parallel worlds?

I want to know the other. I want to walk into that world that to me seems so outré and mysterious and get lost in it and feel it run it's way through my pores into the core of my being and stir and shake and mix.

I want to deeply feel life again. I want to connect.