My presentation went well. It actually went well! That's only the second time I've thought that since I started graduate school. I'm relieved. And happy. Now, of course, I have to attempt to corral the semi-vagrant thoughts that made their way in to the oral version of the paper for the more expanded, article-length version. And add in everything about the effigy of Elizabeth I, more close readings, and a rationale for what I’m contributing to the politics of speech-act theory. But that's for later.
I've spent the morning cleaning the house – more or less happily, since cleaning on Friday makes me generally feel neat and well-organized. But the reason I'm particularly cleaning the house is less happy: we found out, shockingly, casually (and verbally) from the landlord a couple days ago that he's selling it.
I'm not happy. Neither are my housemates. But of course there's very little we can do. He had assured us back in the fall, when we specifically asked, that he wasn't selling the house "any time soon" and would give us "plenty" of notice when he did – and I suppose he meant it, but here we are the beginning of the spring and…oops! No more comfortable, beautiful home for us! Come August, we'll have to be out!
He's coming over today with a realtor, and I intend to have a talk with him afterwards – we drew up a list of concerns and conditions last night. Of course, the best case scenario would be that he sold the house to someone else who wanted to rent it out, but I think that's unlikely. We'll see.
I've considered making an offer for the house myself – I did some research last night – but I just don't think it's within my financial grasp. Sometime in the next ten years I'll be buying a house – maybe sooner rather than later – but probably not this year. I'd have to borrow money from someone (read: my father) even to make a down payment, and that's just not a good situation to be in. So all likelihood is that I'll have to move (AGAIN) come summer. I'm so disgusted with that idea. But again – nothing much to be done about it.
The really distressing thing is the way this sudden threat of sale makes clear that our home is not really our home. We're all in a fairly fragile state these days (when are we not?) and we're also all people for whom a sense of being anchored, held in, in one's place, is very important to maintaining psychological integrity. This new development seems quite physically to pull the ground out from under us – now we're without footing, without base. Suddenly, without warning, Mike has made our home unhomely.
The idea that I'm making a home for myself in Charlottesville has been vastly important to me during the past two years. That shows, for instance, in the way I've become more interested in knowing my way around than I've ever been in any place I knew before. As an undergrad, I never felt I had a handle on Charlottesville geography. I lived at the University, and that's what I knew – even some parts of grounds, in fact, remained a mystery, and I was more or less content for them to be so. It wasn't important to me to connect grounds with my ground, because my ground was still in Roanoke, with my parents.
After graduation, I moved from place to place almost ceaselessly – not a full year anywhere. While I loved Staunton, and I still do, I knew I'd be leaving almost as soon as I got there – the same with London, and even with my return to Roanoke. (It was always temporary, until I got an idea of where it was I'd be going next.)
But when I moved back to Charlottesville the idea that I'd be here for at least five or six years came as a tremendous relief. I need a home, and I'm ready to make Charlottesville that home. I'm ready to really live here, to be familiar with the street names and the map layout, to get invested in local projects and politics (well, emotionally invested, anyway), to know what the neighborhoods mean and where the odds and ends of the city live. I'm ready to have real furniture. I'm ready to put art, not just posters, on the walls. I'm ready to make Friday housecleaning day and to talk about gardening projects and to rake the lawn. I'm ready to have an adult home.
Which is, basically, what I've been doing here, in my current house. And which is why it's pretty upsetting to be suddenly notified that I'll have to leave, and that the landlord expects realtors and prospective buyers to be in and out for months. (That's a big issue on our List of Concerns, believe me.) I really don't want my home disrupted!
But having an adult home also means being an adult, and being an adult means (partly) being able to deal with these things. So I will sit down and discuss things with the landlord. I will begin looking for other houses. I will consider my wants and my needs and my resources, and I will make an informed decision about what to do next.
And I will know, despite this upset, that I can still make my home here. Though the idea of home is tied to – or perhaps signified by – space, particular spaces are not, in fact, essentially to the feeling of at-homeness. My sense of myself as in-place, as grounded, needs to come from a confidence that I know and am known, that I am not vagrant, not in error. (Errare is wandering, thus to err is to stray.) And I am not in error here. I have a lot of anxiety, and things don't always go as well as I might like them to go, but I am not in error. And so I can remain at home, even though I change place.
Meanwhile: I've finally uploaded a page I made months ago with pictures from three sets of explorations at the abandoned Western State Mental Hospital buildings in Staunton. I've called them ghostpages (you can get to them by the tab at the top of this page too), because that's what they seem to be. They are also, however, another way of exploring the idea of the homely and the unhomely. And now they have a place in my virtual home, too.
I've spent the morning cleaning the house – more or less happily, since cleaning on Friday makes me generally feel neat and well-organized. But the reason I'm particularly cleaning the house is less happy: we found out, shockingly, casually (and verbally) from the landlord a couple days ago that he's selling it.
I'm not happy. Neither are my housemates. But of course there's very little we can do. He had assured us back in the fall, when we specifically asked, that he wasn't selling the house "any time soon" and would give us "plenty" of notice when he did – and I suppose he meant it, but here we are the beginning of the spring and…oops! No more comfortable, beautiful home for us! Come August, we'll have to be out!
He's coming over today with a realtor, and I intend to have a talk with him afterwards – we drew up a list of concerns and conditions last night. Of course, the best case scenario would be that he sold the house to someone else who wanted to rent it out, but I think that's unlikely. We'll see.
I've considered making an offer for the house myself – I did some research last night – but I just don't think it's within my financial grasp. Sometime in the next ten years I'll be buying a house – maybe sooner rather than later – but probably not this year. I'd have to borrow money from someone (read: my father) even to make a down payment, and that's just not a good situation to be in. So all likelihood is that I'll have to move (AGAIN) come summer. I'm so disgusted with that idea. But again – nothing much to be done about it.
The really distressing thing is the way this sudden threat of sale makes clear that our home is not really our home. We're all in a fairly fragile state these days (when are we not?) and we're also all people for whom a sense of being anchored, held in, in one's place, is very important to maintaining psychological integrity. This new development seems quite physically to pull the ground out from under us – now we're without footing, without base. Suddenly, without warning, Mike has made our home unhomely.
The idea that I'm making a home for myself in Charlottesville has been vastly important to me during the past two years. That shows, for instance, in the way I've become more interested in knowing my way around than I've ever been in any place I knew before. As an undergrad, I never felt I had a handle on Charlottesville geography. I lived at the University, and that's what I knew – even some parts of grounds, in fact, remained a mystery, and I was more or less content for them to be so. It wasn't important to me to connect grounds with my ground, because my ground was still in Roanoke, with my parents.
After graduation, I moved from place to place almost ceaselessly – not a full year anywhere. While I loved Staunton, and I still do, I knew I'd be leaving almost as soon as I got there – the same with London, and even with my return to Roanoke. (It was always temporary, until I got an idea of where it was I'd be going next.)
But when I moved back to Charlottesville the idea that I'd be here for at least five or six years came as a tremendous relief. I need a home, and I'm ready to make Charlottesville that home. I'm ready to really live here, to be familiar with the street names and the map layout, to get invested in local projects and politics (well, emotionally invested, anyway), to know what the neighborhoods mean and where the odds and ends of the city live. I'm ready to have real furniture. I'm ready to put art, not just posters, on the walls. I'm ready to make Friday housecleaning day and to talk about gardening projects and to rake the lawn. I'm ready to have an adult home.
Which is, basically, what I've been doing here, in my current house. And which is why it's pretty upsetting to be suddenly notified that I'll have to leave, and that the landlord expects realtors and prospective buyers to be in and out for months. (That's a big issue on our List of Concerns, believe me.) I really don't want my home disrupted!
But having an adult home also means being an adult, and being an adult means (partly) being able to deal with these things. So I will sit down and discuss things with the landlord. I will begin looking for other houses. I will consider my wants and my needs and my resources, and I will make an informed decision about what to do next.
And I will know, despite this upset, that I can still make my home here. Though the idea of home is tied to – or perhaps signified by – space, particular spaces are not, in fact, essentially to the feeling of at-homeness. My sense of myself as in-place, as grounded, needs to come from a confidence that I know and am known, that I am not vagrant, not in error. (Errare is wandering, thus to err is to stray.) And I am not in error here. I have a lot of anxiety, and things don't always go as well as I might like them to go, but I am not in error. And so I can remain at home, even though I change place.
Meanwhile: I've finally uploaded a page I made months ago with pictures from three sets of explorations at the abandoned Western State Mental Hospital buildings in Staunton. I've called them ghostpages (you can get to them by the tab at the top of this page too), because that's what they seem to be. They are also, however, another way of exploring the idea of the homely and the unhomely. And now they have a place in my virtual home, too.
Mike selling the house totally sucks! But I think you guys should look into buying a condo or a townhouse or something. Just ask Jamie about the last time we hatched house buying plans, when her father took us to see a real estate agent. During the meeting, it was revealed that a) the prospective homebuyer did NOT have a stable source of income and b) her father did NOT intend to cosign for the loan. It was a very unproductive meeting, seeing as you cannot buy a house when there is no way to make mortgage payments. My point is, though, that such plans seem a lot more feasible now.
fyi: cheap oatmeal at Integral Yoga: that's where I buy mine. Good to see you tonight! - Ania