The Mania of Owning Things

So much going on since Obama's Big Day.

1) Still unsettled about where we will be living since the Great Housing Bubble of 2008-20??. Put a bid on a condo in Brooklyn almost a year ago...still not closed. Not sure we will (or can or want to) now.

2) Trying to start a family at my "advanced maternal age" of 39.

The main question is what do we want in this life? We're almost 40 and we've been sold a bill of goods about what it means to be successful in this society. Much of it is crap. Why? Because much of it simply requires us to buy things, participate in the economy. Even marriage is an economic construct. (Ask Paul how much of a deduction he gets this year on taxes because we got hitched.)

The housing market is crashing...yet we're still entertaining buying. There's the balance between the mania of owning things (thank you, Walt Whitman) and the very human desire to have land that we can walk out on in bare feet. The desire not to live in a large box several dozen feet above the earth with views of concrete, steel, and glass.

I love New York. Anyone who knows me knows that my blood is part East River. I breathe the refrigerated air of the insides of delis. Don't get me wrong. But is this how humans are meant to live? So far removed from nature? I say, sure! The wild energy of the city has certainly propped me up when I was feeling lost. Still does.

But... But...

I have no idea. I just spent the morning looking up attorney jobs for Paul in Santa Fe. I've made the move out there once before. I wasn't ready to stay then. New York kept calling me back home. Am I ready now?

Or do I just need a holiday from real estate and fertility centers?