Empty Homes

I was preparing to leave for The Asylum yesterday morning when I noticed the empty feel of my home.

Carol had already left and the cats knew I was leaving and the house felt empty.

I was thinking about this house standing empty for so many hours every day. I think knowing the cats are alone for these long stretches makes the emptiness even heavier.

We fight and struggle and scratch and claw to "own" our homes and we spend an enormous amount of time away from them because of it.

I find this ironic.

Your home is the single biggest reason you go to work every day, against your will and against your sanity. Imagine how divine your life would be without The Mortgage Vampire breathing down your neck. Imagine how fluidly you would move through life.

We have made so much progress as an uber-intelligent civilization that in 2013 homes are emptier than ever.

People work longer hours for less pay, people work two and three jobs, people work weekends.

And homes stand silent, desperate for some sort of life within that will create fresh memories.

We get home exhausted and bewildered and I am not sure we appreciate or enjoy our homes the way we should.

In addition. given this ruinous economy we live in, the equation has been mortally skewed. Used to be if you were hardy enough to hang on for thirty or forty or fifty years, you would actually end up owning your home and it would be worth five times what you originally paid for it. Then you could sell it, borrow against it, do whatever the hell you wanted with it to exact some payback for the decades of sweat and worry.

Carol and I have been living in this palace for 27 years. We are watching its value diminish year by year, destroying our options, strangling hope.

If I had it all to do over again I would buy income property. A two family home where the other family would be paying my mortgage or a goddamn big chunk of it. Or I would buy a mobile home.

Which reminds me that my theory has been proven out. A while back I talked about The Most Inspiring Guy I Know, that I don't really know. The guy that lives in the mobile home that I drive by every day. No car, doesn't appear to have a job, lives within yards of a convenience store.

I was driving home and I saw a guy walking out of the convenience store with a cloth bag laden with goodies. Looked like one of those cloth bags you carry a ten pin bowling ball in. He was heading in the direction of the mobile home.

A couple of days later as I drove by I actually saw the guy outside his home and IT WAS HIM. Imagine my excitement. I wanted to stop and kiss his feet.

This is a guy who understands the proper balance between owning a home and voluntarily taking on oppressive burdens.

Anyway, it is an odd feeling to me when I commute to and fro, to drive by all these empty homes. Knowing everybody is scrambling like little bugs to suffer indignities for the privilege of owning these homes that stand empty.

I know somebody is going to attack me. Ask "What the hell are you talking about? How the hell can you avoid paying a mortgage? You are an idiot."

I am not offering solutions. I am not trying to be practical. I am just standing outside this bizarre life we all live and wondering how the hell we got here.