Amongst Cerias’ own musings on the misadventures of finding a home to own, my mind turns to the more personally relevant idea of simply moving from one rented lifespace to the next; the ever-pervasive state of half-ownership that keeps us with a roof over our heads, even if it is someone else’s. It always seems both nice yet simultaneously futile to me to engage in this kind of transference — we spend so much time, effort, energy into gathering and packing and folding away all of our possessions just to drag them across the street, the city, the country, scraping trails of where we’ve been and where we’re trying to go expressed only in the percieved upgrades present in the new accomodations as opposed to the last, still lacking whatever vital component it is we’ll be hunting for the next time we undergo our societal ritual obligation to repeat the process again in a few years, months, decades, springing from paddock to paddock in the fields of life like some narcotic-induced wallabe dance (see this article for more on that little analogy), all the while wondering where we’re going to be even further down the road, once we’ve had some time to mature and understand the more important aspects of our living-space as relating to the rest of our evolving existence in the quiet between the storms and tides of time and fate or destiny or self-actualized egoism or whatever drives us from one day to the next, an independant variable from person to person at best.

That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy the benefits, superficial though they may be at times; it truly is nice, refreshing, and beneficial to get a new perspective on things in the most literal sense we have — by changing that with which we are surrounded at our home, the secure station that we operate our lives from, the place we try to find ourselves more nights than not. It brings an element of the new and exciting into our lives, followed by the familiar sense of settling in and finally culminating in the desire to improve further so as to demonstrate to ourselves the continued success and persistent betterment of our being through the ability to control, within reason, the quality of our own standard of living measured against the fluctuations of rental-property housing markets and societal examination of neighborhoods, amenities, and available access to ease-of-living comforts such as walking-distance grocery stores and well-stocked mini-marts to indulge our impulsive impetus for late-night snacking convenience. It’s an interesting model of personalized social-status merit badges etched into our psyches, the panacea for a soul terminally hungry for validation and a justified sense of self-worth through tangible results of extended improvement. The over-happy Xanex-fiend personal trainer of the mind.

For the last nigh-on-two years, I’ve made my residence in a neighborhoods commonly regarded as “not good”. It’s a small, relatively unobtrusive street filled with drug deals, echoes of nearby gunfire, and petty burglary amidst growing gang violence and the occasional SWAT/INS raid to remove some of the even-less-legal elements. Despite its many flaws and pocked-face-forward approach to existing within the city, I have to admit, it’s still a neighborhood I’m personally comfortable in; not a place to raise a family, for sure, but for some inane reason I’ve spent enough time between living around these parts myself (this is round two of that sort of venture) and having other friends in the area that I’m pretty comfortable lurking amongst the unsavory elements and generally blending in as some unnoticed wanderer in the night; it’s the sort of place one can practically vanish in and, despite — or perhaps resultant from — the criminal element, the denizens generally keep to themselves and interaction with the unknown is kept to a minimum. Everyone is on one side of the law and too afraid of the other to chance interacting with someone they don’t recognize; the drug dealers won’t run the risk of encountering a Narc, and the law-abiders refuse to accept the chance of agitating the wrong recently-sated drug addict, so the balance keeps itself nicely in a strange sort of way. It’s not a place I want to exist in given my life path to date, but in another quantum reality where things went different, it’s the right kind of seedy little nowhere that I could probably seclude myself with relative contentment.

The interesting thing about my relocation this time around is it’s the first time in a long time I’ll be moving to an area of town that, so far as can be said for any section of the city of my birth, I’m relatively unfamiliar with. It’s going to present opportunities for adventure as I make my way through spiral-pattern walks to muscle-memorize the new streets and twists and turns, find the alleyways and footpaths that carve through the always-cumbersome roadways designed for larger, more dangerous modes of transportation such as the steel trap-boxes we so quickly and willingly strap into for the morning commute — which I’ll be biking from now on, as a side note, from my much-closer-to-work location. Exploring a new home turf is always fun, and there are always a few surprises that one doesn’t expect when engaging in such activities; with places you’re marginally familiar with, this is doubly true — especially if you’re accustomed to seeing them from a car or similar vehicle, and can’t go meandering down each turn or follow bike paths and the like to the places that always manage to hold the most interesting things. I really look forward to acquainting myself with another part of town, and generally having an excuse to roam pointlessly for hours amongst the streets in what amounts to a concentrated effort to get lost and hope that I fail. Self-imposed reverse-psychology reward-based systems to anticipate the unforseen — I definitely count it as a success if I can manage to lose myself here.

When was the last time you tried to get lost? Did you succeed?

So I’ve been trying to buy a house lately, a condo really, but real estate none the less. Six months we have offers out of various short sales and pending foreclosures, offering generally ten percent less than the asking price. We keep telling our real estate agent “The market is falling. They can take what we’re offering now, or they can sell it to someone else at less than we’re offering. We’re being generous.”

Of course, the banks are required to show due diligence to their shareholders, showing they’re trying to get the highest possible price for the properties they own. In so doing, however, they are actually making significantly less. Take, for example, the place we’re finally looking into. We had an offer on a short sale condo quite literally next door, an offer at $98,000. The bank blew us off, wouldn’t even respond to the offer. They wanted closer to $108,000. The place we’re getting right next door is going for closer to $90,000. The condo is exactly the same. That information becomes a matter of public record. The property value is set at whatever we pay for the property, and will affect values of everything around. Had they taken the offer, they would have made the $98,000. Now, they won’t find anyone willing to pay that much.

Last night, we were filling out paperwork for the loan application. The mortgage crisis and subsequent assimilation of Fannie Mae into quasi-government control has changed some things, of course. Like the several forms we had to sign that stated “Yes, I understand that if I don’t pay the mortgage, I can lose my house.” I’d like to think this is a new addition, that the large number of foreclosures on sub-prime mortgages didn’t include those forms. I’d like to think this is a response to the problem and wasn’t present when it occurred. I’d like to think that we’re trying to drown ourselves in regulations and safeguards now.

Because then it just shows that this is what the world has come to. I signed those papers thinking to myself “Yes, I’m aware that if you don’t pay for something, it’s not yours. That’s a fundamental aspect of the capitalist system. You pay for what you get.” Some of this comes from the idea of “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” instilled in me by my one economics class, but most of it comes from growing up in this country and observing things around me. If you take something and don’t pay for it, that’s called stealing.

So I’d like to think that now we’ve gotten to the point where you have to sign, under penalty of perjury, that you understand that you have to pay for the things you buy. I’d like to think that this was used as an excuse and we’re trying to stop it by making things even more ridiculous. “I didn’t know any better. How could I know that I would lose my house if I didn’t pay for it?” Well, now you have several forms that show you are aware of that basic premise of our economic system.

Because if this isn’t new, if these forms were part of the packets signed by all the families now in foreclosure, then we, as a nation, are simply incredibly stupid.