A few weeks ago a friend and I were talking about the fractions of life – how events can shift your course depending on the smallest difference in circumstance or how you handle a situation. I feel this acutely every time I walk around my work neighborhood in Portland, a pocket between the Pearl and Chinatown. In the Pearl, well-to-dos get their nails buffed and highlights touched up, while a few blocks away in Chinatown down-on-their-lucks wait in line for a bowl of soup.
Fractions are funny, my friend and I agreed, in that they are intangible and hard to measure until the repercussions of an action are fully unfurled, and sometimes only become apparent when you stack each fraction of change on top of the other. I am somewhere between these two worlds of well-to-do and down-on-my-luck, but walking the line down 5th Street in Chinatown makes me wonder how many steps there actually are, between here and there. #occupywallstreet