Little Boxes, Little Boxes

How in the name of Pete can people say it's a small world?

(Granted, I've been caught saying that myself on more than one occasion...)

As I pass house after house, green ones and pink ones and blue ones and yellow ones--with the occasional brick ones and stone ones with ivy climbing up their walls--I sometimes become overwhelmed thinking about the lives that have been lived inside each of them. How homes have been made, and how they have been un-made. 

Perhaps it's the fact that I just started living on my own in August and have my very own space that I've tried to cozy up. It's tiny, but it's lived-in and has started, I think, to borrow my personality. Pictures of faces I love on the fridge, brightly-colored art from the little ones in my life on the walls (as well as from the big ones), plants peeping out the windows, a jar full of marbles on top of a shelf chock full of books, a crazy quilt on the bed... it's become an extension of who I am, in a sense. I've become comfortable here. 

When I think about this, even my street can become a Big World and ample space for imaginings. It makes me want to see inside each house frame, pick it apart. Get to know the people inside. 

Globalization, my foot. Technology has its place, and fingers on keyboards and voices on radio waves and faces on televisions may argue in a thousand ways for a world in which isolation is impossible. 

But I want to know who lives in the house next door.