...our tendency to postpone living and enjoyment -- as if we were meant to put up with substandard circumstances because we'll be rewarded later. With what, a house in the suburbs? That's the reward? Lots of people realize that isn't exactly the gold ring it has been made out to be.Amen.
He natters on boringly in places, but I liked that bit. It's about the things we take for granted. What we assume we want without ever asking if we really do, or why. What are we working for?
Build a family, buy a house, raise your two children, let them have a dog if they agree to the responsibilities, save for college, take up tennis, retire; be a good person, vote, mow your lawn, contribute to the bake sale, shovel your driveway, take the car for regular inspections, change your oil, watch TV, take a vacation once a year.
What do you want? Is it the end, or a means?
I grew up in a house in the suburbs. It was nice. We lived at the end of the street, and there were no houses on the other side, so basically half the directions I could choose when I stepped out the front door were woods. Not, like, virgin forest, but plenty extensive and occasionally terrifying enough for a six-to-eleven year-old. My best friends also lived just down the street from -- what seemed at the time to be -- endless woods, so we never lacked for places to explore.
Call that the best-case-suburban-scenario.
(But consider when the woods are gone. (My woods are now a golf course; my friends' are mcmansion subdivisions.) Because they're more than a place to play; they're a place to get lost in. To quote a much better book:
All hope is gone,
for fairy tales,
it shall be written here,
are dying with the forests.
...
Because men
are killing the forests
the fairy tales are running away,
the spindle doesn’t know
whom to prick,
the little girl’s hands
that her father has chopped off,
haven’t a single tree to catch hold of,
the third wish remains unspoken.
King Thrushbeard no longer owns one thing.
Children can no longer get lost.
The number seven means no more than exactly seven.
Because men have killed the forests,
the fairy tales are trotting off to the cities
And end badly.
- The Rat, Gunter Grass.)
So, okay, no woods. What else do you even have to look forward to? Flat, green, empty, maybe with a few herbs tucked in around the edges if you're enterprising. This is where the children play. And children need a place to play, even if it's bounded. Still, I already have a backyard. It's called Prospect Park and it has lawns and woods and lakes and barbecue spots and playgrounds and what the hell else could I possibly need in that department? Also, right, back to lawns: listen to this. Get over it, America.
Of course there's the house itself too. Bought, not rented. Because... future value? An investment in...? First of all, our studio is plenty big enough. (Unless someone gives me a pool table.) I don't have to wonder which room R is in, or who's going to clean them all. I don't need more space for stuff; I already do my best to get rid of the stuff I have. And the house itself counts! Why own a thing I have to pay taxes on and take care of and learn about septic tanks or whatever?
Final dealbreaker is of course the car. I do not like cars, Sam-I-Am. I will embark on the occasional cross-country (America, Iceland, Mexico) trip in a motor vehicle, but the last thing in the world I want is to have to interact with one on a daily basis. Cars are smelly and expensive and dangerous and good for neither you nor the environment, and America would look very different and probably better if we had not, around the middle of the last century, succumbed to the vision of the automobile.
Which is all to say: No thank you.
RECIPE: Prosciutto, Goat Cheese, & Fig Sandwiches, because everyone needs a fancy delicious sandwich in their back pocket and this has been mine since like 2002.
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