I just returned from the new Wholefoods in Redmond. It describes itself as ‘an aesthetically pleasing design combined with electronic and audio visual features designed with the customer in mind’. In actuality it is a beautiful store filled with aspirational suburbanites filling their shopping carts with conscience abating organic morsels. However I cannot escape the observation that this is perhaps the current peak of our civilization. It is perhaps the very essence of modern western bourgeois. Our generation does not explore new continents, fly to the moon or build great edifices to our gods. The harmless selfishness of suburbia congregates here: drinking at the trough of affluence.

I am suburban. I aspire to wealth. My tastes feign sophistication with a sophistry which betrays their middle class origins. I shopped there. I will return: drawn by it's ability to grant my dreams of luxury in it's wide isles.

Knowing One's Curse Never Abates It.