Saturday, January 22, 2011

East Side

I’ve been inside what is going to be my new house three times now and I’ve forgotten to take a single video shot of the floor plan on each occasion. Of course, this is a stupid problem to even be annoyed with especially when you consider that children are starving to death in Africa with every second that I’m kicking myself for forgetting this little thing, but that’s beside the point.






The fact is that I regularly videotape bugs that I find in my backyard right now so getting footage of the place that I’m going to live until I die shouldn’t be a problem for me to remember, right? So far, I haven’t so fuck me and fuck all of those AIDS babies living on the edge of the Sahara for making me feel guilty about being pissed off about it.

My wife has been there four times. On her third visit to the place, I was at work so I gave her my camera to take footage with. Instead of getting shots of the rooms and the yard for me to review, she chose to get all esoteric and metaphorical in her approach to framing the scene.






That thing on the fence was a buzzard and I can’t get too mad at her for failing me in this regard because (as what this post is about) I haven’t been the most attentive person regarding this life-altering purchase either. I’ve reviewed all of the paperwork and jumped through all of the financing hurdles. I’ve met with the inspector and nodded at the appropriate times when he’s told me about the few things that needed repair. I’ve even sat in the driveway of this house late at night, to see how weird the neighborhood gets but still, I’ve forgotten to take footage of it vacant.

In this respect, my wife is actually ahead of me because she filmed this shot.






What does it mean that I can’t ever remember to take the video camera that I always carry with me out of my pocket to film this house? What does it mean that my wife only chose to film scavenger birds and flipped off light switches when she was there? Why do I even feel the need to obtain a record of this?

As I outlined earlier in this web-journal of mine, I went through a period this summer where my faith died. It was on life support before this transition, but after the hot months had passed I checked on it and it was as dead as one of those emaciated AIDS babies in Africa.

To my surprise, I discovered that along with my already pale view of Christianity, all of my notions of fate and karma had passed. To put it quite simply, I can’t even force myself to regard any of this as mystical or supernatural.

I can’t look at this in Freudian terms either. The Id and the Superego will have to take a backseat here and just chill the fuck out. If I thought that I was truly suppressing a desire to run from a middle-class suburban life then I’d have to come to terms with a lot of the pretty harsh things that I’ve said to my Hipster friends about their neighborhoods.

True, I’d love to live in a 3 bedroom bungalow next to the downtown arts district (I’m not burying that in my repressed desires) but more so, I’d much rather let my kid get a good education and be allowed to play with her friends at the park that’s just down the street from the totally fucking beautiful creek near where I’ll be planning to live. I can take her to the museums in my spare time and besides that, there’s all this crack and ghetto shit to be concerned with when you chose that lifestyle. From what I can tell, it’s like a White-Guy badge of courage to say that you’ve chased away a pedophile that’s addicted to methamphetamines in your neighborhood if you chose to live this way.

No, I don’t think that this is a God, fate, karma or even a good old fashioned Jesusing factor that’s caused me to forget to take video of this home. I think that it’s just being too busy. You see, we were thisclose to making an offer on another fucked up crack head house before this one came up so it’s taking time for me to readjust. Also, I’m moving from this, to this so I feel a bit like George Jefferson did when he got a chance to move out of Obama's old neighborhood into those mix race aparments on the East Side to yell at his family in.

It may not be much but fuck this kind of bullshit at the old house.




I won’t miss a second of it.

9 comments:

  1. The new place looks awesome. I'm happy for you guys. I'm even happier that I will no longer have to hear your incessant bitching about the old house and making excuses about buying a new TV for aesthetic reasons when in actuality it was reason to have a better Black OP's experience.

    ReplyDelete
  2. here we are now, going to the east side
    i pick up my friends and we start to ride
    ride all night, we ride all day
    some may come and some may stay

    ReplyDelete
  3. Fish don't fry in the kitchen;
    beans don't burn on the grill.
    Took a whole lotta tryin',
    just to get up that hill.
    Now we're up in the big leagues;
    gettin' our turn at bat.
    As long as we live, it's you and me baby,
    there ain't nothin' wrong with that.

    I totally know what you're going through in that head of yours. We had the same experience, just in a different city/state. I found our neighbor dead when we lived in our first house. It was then that I came to the realization that there's NO WAY IN HELL we were going to let Trevor grow up in that neighborhood. The "For Sale" sign went up the following week.

    At the end of the day it's all about your sweet little girl. You'll see, suburbia isn't that bad (especially when your kids get to play outside at night during the summer with all of the other kids, while the adults sit outside drinking wine and beer) and you're going to love how everyone takes care of their homes. Besides, I'm sure you're not going to miss the ding-dong-ditching at night. I still remember you shooting up from your seat and running outside to yell profanities while we were visiting. ;) Ah, good times.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Everyone knows the best meth comes from the neighborhood with the best schools.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Did you buy some waterwings, too? Just in case.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Loved this - a look back and a look forward before diving in!

    ReplyDelete
  7. You will follow you where ever you go. So it will be a good place wherever it is.

    ReplyDelete
  8. That's because it was all a pipe dream. It's impossible to take pictures of dreams.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I think the buzzard is a good sign. It'll clear away all the dead animal detritus that finds its way into your yard.

    ReplyDelete