…the scale of disaster you’ve left yourself open to.

“It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you’ve made, and there’s this panic because you don’t know yet the scale of disaster you’ve left yourself open to.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro

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The other day I asked – What’s better than a stick in the eye?

To make a long post short.

The reply to my question was – What is the story behind the question?

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Where does a story begin?

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I’m not answering that, and I don’t recommend that anyone tries to answer it either as you may end up where I always end up – going around in circles and wondering if this circle is a vicious cycle doomed to keep repeating itself.

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I once went on a circular spinning ride at a fair. The person in charge of the ride was a bit… lax about the rules of such things. They understood that people sometimes want to get more for their money, and sometimes want fun to last a little bit longer than it usually does.

I learned a lesson that day in why funfair rides stop just as their fun factor kicks in. Why you always get off feeling a bit frustrated and wanting more.

I used to hate that until… I was stuck on a ride which went on longer than its appointed length because the guy who was in control of the lever which stopped it asked those on it – Do you want more? – and many said – YES!!!

I can’t recall if I said – YES!!! – too. Maybe… but never again! Not when someone else gets to decide when to stop it or keep it going.

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This post is taking a circuitous route, as all of my posts do… but at least you can get off whenever you want to.

The other day I visited a ‘house for sale’. I sort of have to move out of where I have been living for almost a decade. This is the longest I have lived anywhere. That’s a weird experience for me. One which I quite like and which has prompted me to perhaps settle down and buy a home instead of what I usually do.

I’ve always fanatsised about owning my own home – I’ve never had that. I’m an involuntary gypsy who sometimes does it voluntarily but while doing it either way mostly wishes things were otherwise. Like a funfair rider, you want to get off but want to stay on, either way you wish for otherwise.

I know my own contrariness better than I know the back of my hand – I doubt if I’d recognise that if it wasn’t attached to the rest of me.

Anyway, to make an endless story a little less endless… as tempting as it is to not do that.

This house I visited as a possible place for me and my partner to buy as a home for… ever, maybe… even though it was overpriced, but that’s normal for the real estate market, especially where I live… was beautiful, in fact it was absolutely perfect in almost every way (except the price).

However… a house needs land beneath it, and a little bit around it. A home needs roots too to give you roots, or something like that (what do I know of such things). This house was out of scale and proportion with the land beneath and around it in ways that defied logic.

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Now, I’m not the most practical person in the world, I could actually compete for the most impractical human on Earth – I’d lose by a wide margin if I could measure such things without getting confused. But the seller of this house might win it hands down.

They were selling a house they didn’t want to sell. It was being sold not because it had to be sold but because they wanted to move halfway around the world, but didn’t really want to do that and didn’t really have to do it.

The house had been a wreck when they had bought it years ago. They had nurtured it to restoration piece by piece. You could see it was a labour of love… a love which bordered on obsession, an obsession which was still alive and kicking up a fuss – humans don’t own their obsessions, their obsessions own them. You can’t sell it, especially when you don’t want to.

It was an intensely beautiful abode, but that intense beauty came at a price which could be described as Faustian. And if someone else bought this house, they may have to inherit the pact… or worse still, not inherit it but be beholden to those who had made it.

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“Once I blazed across the sky,
Leaving trails of flame;
I fell to earth, and here I lie –
Who’ll help me up again?
-A Shooting Star”
― Goethe

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I’m talking in riddles. Basically the house could be bought at an exorbitant price (a price not dictated by the market or even real estate agentness, but by a passion which did not want to let go and be sold), but most of the land around it would be owned by the sellers of the house… and in some ways they would never accept your ownership of their house. You would be paying through the nose until it bled to own nothing because they’d never let it go.

At some point I began to suspect that the seller of this beautiful and attractive dream (and wild and crazy drama – every added piece of information they gave turned fact into fiction) was…

… you know what I’m going to say, don’t you.

That.

I never think of it like that, think of people like that, until I am reminded of that kind of thinking and that kind of people. This experience made me think of it like that. Perhaps because it hits so very close to home in so very many ways that…

This house reminded me of the place in which I grew up, some of the time.

…everything is out of proportion and the scales are swaying to extremes, unbalanced as ever. Yet… there is something about it which is so attractive that you fail to see the unattractive side even if it is in your face, screaming at you!

I saw it… I didn’t want to and yet I needed to, so I sort of wanted to… and that confused me as well as making everything clear. Especially the path ahead… which didn’t include this house as a home, unless I wanted to suffer. Not just my suffering but that of those selling it, and that of those whom I would discover if I bought into such a place.

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“Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast,
And each will wrestle for the mastery there”
― Goethe

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I felt like a pawn in someone else’s chess game. A doll in their dollhouse. A rider of their funfair ride and they would always be in control of the lever which made it spin or stop.

Such a beautiful place…but everything around it was ever decreasing circles of increasing ugliness, particularly that of human nature when it is warped and continues to warp until it thinks it has transcended itself and sees itself as anything but warped.

There is so much more to this experience than I can express at this time, but… that’s life and being human and figuring things out along the way, like how to deal and live with other humans.

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What is better than a stick in your eye?

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Perhaps, one answer is… accepting that the stick is there rather than trying to pretend that it is not and creating a reality around that which is an illusion.

Perhaps the ideal home for me is one which is ugly but which is built upon and surrounded by a very real beauty. One which those who own it are willing to let go of it, so you can own it, and they can move on… rather than never let go and so everyone is trapped in a cycle which will turn vicious… if it already hasn’t turned that way.

Some rides just need to end, so we can get off and then decide whether to get on that one again, let someone else take our place, ride on a different ride or just… leave the funfair behind.

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