Post-movie Let Down

I enjoyed my alone time watching the IMAX Hunger Games movie here in Columbia, MD. It was a good movie. Of course, I wanted to see so much more than made it into the finished film. I left feeling old, fat, and out-of-shape. I can, and really do need to do something about that. Then I went to Starbucks and had a chai and a piece of pumpkin bread, which seemed like extreme indulgence after life in District 12 or trying to stay alive while being hunted in the woods.

I did some people-watching, with the old fashioned school fire alarm bell and organ music of the mall carousel leaking in through the open entrance of the store. Everyone seems to be so beautiful in their own way. It's weird. They all seem precious somehow,
and yet, like there are just way too many of us well-fed, entitled-feeling, naive, disconnected from our environment, soft, spoiled, and yet innocent Americans min one place. It seems...indecent somehow and yet I feel protective of each person I see here. We, the Starbucks customers, who have likely never known real physical hardship or hunger, we who are able to consider our psychological needs because we are so beyond survival. I know we earn our keep in our own way, but I feel like a Capitol citizen: silly, vulgar in my wealth, unaware of the real suffering in the world, waiting to be entertained.

My pumpkin bread was exquisite. I ate it in quarters and savored each one like it was a rare delicacy. I don't want to fall asleep again and take everything for granted. I don't want to wear the pink wig, butterfly eyelashes, and ridiculous fashions of the Capitol. I wonder how long until I am again so wrapped up in myself that I ignore the real luxury of my existence here.

 Everyone here is Someone to somebody, but it also seems like, in such an ocean of individuals, how can one really expect to be any more significant, special, or successful than another in the context of so many people? We Americans strive to matter, to make a difference, and maybe we can in our own little rings of contacts. Most won't though. Most of us will live and die and in 2 generations have our entire story lost, like all the generations of individual dinosaurs that didn't wind up as fossils. What can I do to be a fossil? And why do I care? Why does this feel like a need to me? What foolish pride, to think any of us could be remembered. But some are. A very select few. I guess I want to be "select.". Don't we all? Don't we all imagine ourselves as Katniss and not the dead tributes, the people in the Capitol, the avoxes, dead miners, or the rest of the unknowns?  Fools.  Me too.