When the fence goes up, jackhammering can’t be far away
This piece was written to a prompt in an AWA workshop about two weeks ago. Is it a rant or a lament? You decide.
The squirrels can have my edits. Torn, tossed, soggy with rain or blown by bitter autumn winds, I don’t care. You didn’t believe me, did you? Fine. Continue. Square the circle, whatever that means, and purge. Continue the scrabble. No nest-making now, but nest-undoing. You thought you knew me, but you didn’t. And anyway, I ran away. Chicken bones near the curbs — evidence of unruly neighbors. Pork cutlet remains, too. Who eats a cutlet in the car and then tosses the bone out the window? It’s as astonishing as it is common.
Another page, another paragraph. Can I run screaming from the room now? He’s defeated. Wilted and decomposing before our very eyes, but still entrenched. The paralysis of immorality must be overcome. My toes are numb. I can walk. I can climb stairs. But it is hard for me to put on my sneakers. Hard to shove the lower veggie drawer closed with my right foot. I have to stop and think: “Not right foot. Left.” Marching orders. Unanimous consent. A disappointed pixie. Short jokes from someone 4’11”? I’ll take them! Like the one about a good snowstorm in Chicago swallowing Bovino whole. Lake-effect weather vs. a little beast in tactical gear. Who knew whistles on neck ropes would become essential urban wear and PS not purchased from Target or Amazon? Costco delivers, I’ve discovered. Two shirts on their way. Somehow I don’t have many long-sleeved shirts anymore. Not sure how that happened. When is the BIG BOYCOTT by the way? “The Big Boycott” sounds like a federal bill or a boy band. Because we’re out of food. I’ll cook up cabbage remnants with red onion. Open a can of chic peas. Or something. In case today is a day not to shop. Nov 20.
Have you noticed the banners on Amazon? No, of course not. You’ve quit Jeff Bezos and good for you! The banners read BLACK FRIDAY WEEK. How to erode traditions and gut meaning, calendars, and sense with greed. Can’t wait to see the Met Gala this year. Maybe Lauren will show up wearing a fig leaf and nothing else. Betty Boop pumps and a black lace jumpsuit (unlined) will not do. Are long-sleeved shirts like socks now — vanishing into an inaccessible alternate universe? I’d like to go home, whatever that means. Years versus preference. For instance, I like the Berkshires and haven’t lived there for more than forty years. We were talking about boycotts and now all I can think about is Brodie Mountain Road, how it curved up and over and then down to home. THAT home. The one I lived in for all of a year, so make that make sense.
Shit in the attic. Shit in the basement. But only a few long-sleeved shirts and by the way most of the ones that remain are pink. How did THAT happen? “Love is as essential as air.” Who said that? Seriously, do you know who said that?
There’s peanut butter in the house. We won’t go hungry. Oh, and ravioli in the basement fridge. How bad can things be with peanut butter in the cupboard and ravioli in the fridge? Costco ravioli, it should be said. I put the pasta on a waist-high shelf so I wouldn’t have to bend and open a drawer or think about which foot to slide it shut with.
It’s cold out there and I don’t want to walk the dog but will. Walking the dog is one of those things that keeps me whole, offers up a physical prayer to the neighborhood, as if showing up on the streets religiously says, “Here we are world, making the rounds, grateful to be alive even with the detritus of pork bones and yet another house being torn down.”
“Another House Being Torn Down” could be the caption for my town. One chapter would be about the buildings coming down and another about the buildings taking their place. Generally: no traditional roof lines, no color, ugly siding. It’s a thing. A style? I call it “Dentist Office Chic” because that’s what these oversized homes look like — office buildings. It must be cheaper to skimp on clapboard and angled eaves because, you know, greed. Even if this town had felt like home before, the furiously noisy pace of tear downs and the questionable taste of their looming replacements would make me a stranger here.
We have a new house across the street. They moved in (from somewhere in MA on the border of NH). The house is valued at the town at 2.2 million. 2.2 million. We bought our house in 1992 for 6% of the current value of their house. I’m not sure why theirs is valued so high. The flooring is that engineered wood that clicks together. Yuck. Their house is 3x what the town values ours. Bf they moved in, the basement light was on for an entire year as they were building. John and I talked about that d sad specifically! When it was finally turned off a few months ago, grief struck that we couldn’t talk about it. Those tiny grief ambushes add up. Not so tiny. But not why I’m writing. Here’s my rant: they have 2 lamps, mounted on granite posts that line the driveway. They never turn them off. It’s never dark any more. I hate it. So I give very low odds that we will be friends. I will try to open my heart, but it’s a challenge I just can’t manage along either everything else right now. All this to say I feel your lament rant.
Oh Lisa. I feel how that sadness clobbered you. I can’t quite imagine the accumulation of such moments. The whole light on thing is a lose:/lose I’ve discovered. We have two neighbors with flood lamps that shine into our bedroom. To ask for the light to be turned off turns you into the worst sort of persnickety neighbor. (Really?) I added another layer of cloth over the windows and now sleep with an eye mask almost every night.
Never turn them off? Never? What is wrong with people?
Dee~ Whatever you call it, I love when you write like this. I’m thinking of the book I used to own “Spilling Open” by Sabrina Ward Harrison. I was very much into her work for a time. Just dump it out, clear your head and we’ll pick up the pieces that relate to our own lived experience.
For today, that is the thought of ‘home’, which for me remains the little town in Northern Nevada – where I only lived for 5 years out of 66…different time, different man…babies arriving, so different me too. But, not. Same me. Authentic me? Soul me? A place that seeped in so deep, it still feels like home. I don’t go back, I can’t go back and I know it would not be the same anyway, as the town as grown so much since 1984. sigh.
And across the street we have two lots…one had held a small unique house with a tall front porch…darling little house on a very big lot. There is now one or two houses behind it on the same lot. The other lot…was it empty? I no longer remember. It now holds 3-4 attached homes that sit sideways on the lot, making their own little street/long driveway? More people. The original lots around here a really big, so there will be even more of that kind of building I assume.
Minden/Gardnerville NV of the early 1980’s sounds good about now.
Thanks for opening up my own lament and trip down memory lane.
I have one or two of Ward’s books. I liked her visual expressions quite a lot. Thanks for sharing your sense of home and all that makes it impossible to go back.
Spilling open says it so well. Three bedroom house across the road from us in a rural northern Californis town on sale for $510,000, latest mass shooting in Providence RI on the venerated College Hill where I had ny first apartment after college, texts from a friend’s re ICE presence in her placid Ojai Valley in SoCal, bipolar sister sending crazy holiday emails. So many losses. Spilling over is sometimes the best option. Thank you Dee.
You have just written a very condensed and powerful lament. Thank you.
ro848~ Thank you for such a capsule of what it means to be in this time. The shared driveway homes I mentioned go for over $700,000.00. sigh. I almost moved to Ojai years ago and have visited many times over the years, so sad to hear this. Thanks for spilling open here.
The house they tore down up the street?(a rebuild that required EIGHT MONTHS Of jackhammering btw) sold for 3.2 MM. This is a street of modest war-time capes and center entrance colonials. Ridiculous.
Your rants never disappoint .. hope you enjoyed your weekend.
Thanks Tina. It’s been nice.
I’ve owned three homes but since 2002, have rented in many states cause we wanted to be free to discover America due to a wish I made my dying Dad. Rented many houses, but now we rent an apartment. We haven’t lived in one since our college days and it took an adjustment. Surprising to us, our neighborhood is quiet with many kind and friendly neighbors. At our ages, 78 and 82, we still want to live among all ages. However, that first year here, our upstairs neighbor, a man of about 30, seemingly quiet, worked at home on line doing consumer research, etc., had talk radio on loud all night long. First week I put up with it, 2nd week, I climbed the stairs in my pj’s at 4 am, knocked loudly, told him I was his downstairs neighbor and asked if he was a disc jokey…told him we needed to sleep and he needed to turn his “noise” down. He appeared stunned, mumbled an apology, and the “noise” stopped. (He turned out to be a nice neighbor, offering to help at times when he saw me struggling with large packages.). In telling my husband about this encounter the next day at breakfast, (Rich sleeps through anything and had not realized that I had gotten up) he asked me if I was crazy, that the guy upstairs could have been dangerous, had a weapon, yada yada yada! It simply never crossed my mind cause my rage was huge as was my need for sleep…now if the neighbor had been listening to some nice music or a liberal radio station, I might not have shown my anger and marched upstairs!!!. He has since moved.
For me, home is held within, not a building, not bricks and motor or adobe so why then did I get so upset when the new landlords changed the paint on our building. We had the typical New Mexico colors of sandstone and burnt sienna and clay. All of a sudden we now were living in Gothic manor- a black building trimmed in gray and white. I told myself it shouldn’t matter how the apartment building looked but it did and our black door took some getting used to. A year later, I don’t cringe driving up to our apartment but that’s because I have softened it with ceramic Kokopelli planters and several Kokopelli statues, Kokopelli the trickster god.I had also hung a vibrant red chili ristra outside by the front door but the winds here are fierce and ripped it apart. My ristra now hangs from the ceiling by the window in my kitchen. Somehow I know that the spirits that dance in our winds, approve.
As always, your sharing shines with beautiful spirit and storytelling. I’m glad the loud man turned out to be reasonable. Do you ever regret honoring your father’s wishes in the way that you did? It doesn’t sound like you do, but wondering.
There have been times when I think of all of the $ it took to make all of those moves and how having that $ these days, would be helpful. Still, the gifts of living in so many places, going places where we knew no one and relying on our abilities to connect, listen, share, “talk story” as the Hawaiians say, were such rich experiences. My Dad was a wise, caring man and living up to my promise to him, gave me resilience I would not have known I had.
Oh Dee. What a powerful piece of writing.💔
Sometimes at night we just sit with the mutts and howl together. Strange for the neighbors to hear, but good for the soul. (Does Finn howl? Vinny loves it and must be part coyote. He’s a star.)
At least now the it snowed things have quieted down in my town. Three McMansion monstrosities going up around me. And the latest kick is that neighbors cutting down all the ancient trees. When we arrived in 2002 there were canopies of leaves in summer, now just poisoned well manicured lawns. Very sad and worth howling about.
I’m glad you’re able to spend the holidays out by Billy. 🧡 and of course the boys. Would you two move out there? I think I’d love it. We’re hoping to drive cross country in 26. We can howl from coast to coast. I can’t wait!!
The only time Finn howls is when a series of emergency vehicles goes by. He howls right in key with the sirens!
I’ve gotten to like LA, the little of it that I know, but it’s hard to imagine moving here, even though I’ve thought about it.
The tear down of trees is a whole other topic of destruction. Gawd. With one project (it’s years ago now), they tore down an entire woods. Acres and acres of trees. Not surprisingly I found a dead owl on the sidewalk not long after.
Would you take the dogs with you driving across country? I’ve never done it and seems like everyone should before they die!
I too hate the way they are tearing down perfectly good houses and buildings. Here in Brookline it is the same. All those beautiful old victorian houses being swallowed up by developers and replaced with “dentist office chic” as you call it…..Not even a balcony…..All this can be yours for 3 million plus!
And it’s hard to say whether having a new home on your street, ugly and hulking, increases the value of yours or not. Did I mention the one near us sold for 3.2MM? I think I did.
Brookline is already pretty dense, so there’s that. That’s a difference. Newton is becoming more like Brookline year by year, which in and of itself is okay.
I’d hate to see those beautiful old homes coming down. One year on Parker Street they razed a stately old place with beautiful proportions and good bones. But they replaced it with a two townhomes (white flat exterior with black trim. Zero divided glass windows). So twice the return.
I love your ranting laments (for surely this is both) … which has triggered me to write my own.
We live with century-old “brown furniture” inherited from our grandparents. While chairs and couches come and go, the old beds, bureaus, and desks soldier on. These days, particle board furniture has all the grace of cardboard boxes, which is to say, none at all.
(and here Pete Seeger starts playing in my head … “Boxes, little boxes … they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look the same”)
Driving through recently-constructed developments (I initially wrote “neighborhoods,” but they’re not really that) feels downright dystopian. I just re-read A Wrinkle in Time, which was written decades ago and was struck by the prescient parallels with modern day living. I briefly considered re-reading some more … Brave New World, 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, etc etc … but I don’t know if I could bear the sadness.
Last and then I’ll stop … the eccentric Hill Country house we sold six years ago recently went on the market for nearly double what we got for it. We looked at the real estate ad and saw the stained concrete floors had been covered in laminate, the warm golden walls painted white, the raw cedar wood moldings and cabinets all gone (replaced with particle board no doubt). Outside, the gravel drive was paved and the front entrance gated. A Joanna Gaines farmhouse update if ever there was one. My heart broke.
You describe the trends so well. Even though our house is 1810 with original pine floors in some rooms and 96” windows in either side of the fireplace, it’s probably a tear down
I wouldn’t be able to reread Handmaid’s Tale either. Could only watch one episode or the series on TV.
I have seen woods taken down as well – for “affordable housing” that starts at 600k for a one bedroom. Not a value. I’d rather have the green space. Now we have deers wandering the streets like we’re living in Northern Exposure not Northport. Sheeze.
Re the big drive – Yes we’re taking the pups. They love the car and hotels. They handled our Feb trip to Fla better than us lol. We will visit family in the midwest and pals in CA. I hope to see more of SD and maybe a trip to New Orleans on the way home. I’d rather do this than take a Viking cruise which seems like the retirement vacay of choice by our peers. I’m really really looking forward to it!
Sounds amazing.
I have typing paper taped to certain sections of my front facing windows…lights from the “new People” across the street shine in and into my eyes while seated on my couch. Random sheets of paper… even when they are NOT home. Today his car parked on the street in front of my drive, making the delivery of heating oil difficult for the tank driver…. my Son said ignore it- the guy is a professional…
Ugh so sorry!
I am living in my 8th home…not military- McDonalds. One home was in Europe. I ended up loving each and every one of these homes…some hard times at first especially all the schools for our kids. Would I change anything? well, there was one house I wish I could have called my forever house….the one before this one.
Where was that one?