pebblerocker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pebblerocker) wrote2014-10-14 11:43 am
pebblerocker) wrote2014-10-14 11:43 am
A new place
Every time I think I might post something here, I realise that a lot of it wouldn't make much sense without context, and I never get around to posting the "where I'm at" post.
I moved house. I moved from a smallish and cheap house in a noisy street to a beautiful roomy new house on the edge of town. This has been cause for some happiness and some distress. I love living in a really nice house, where the walls are a colour I chose and there are no neighbours zooming up and down the driveway past my window twenty times a day and it's wonderfully quiet and dark at night. I am distressed that not everybody gets this sort of thing. Life isn't fair and that bothers me even when the unfairness in my favour.
I am filled with shame when a person in my life says that I must have been doing a lot of positive thinking to attract such wealth from the Universe. According to her beliefs I wouldn't have received this if I didn't deserve it, and therefore I must be better than her and she'll have to do more affirmations until she deserves it too. This thinking is horrifying to me; being praised for winning at capitalism is not the sort of approval I want.
I'm trying to invent a system of town planning in which everyone can have a bedroom window looking out over trees and croplands instead of streetlights and roads. My ideal town needs to have fractal edges so everyone can live at the edge. Although perhaps there are outgoing types of people who wouldn't mind living in the middle with people all around them. I love being at home and not having to see or hear any people at all.
When the people in my old street heard I was moving out soon, several different people approached me to ask when my moving date was and whether they could move straight in after me. I'm happy to be out of that ticky-tacky box of a house, but it was at least sunny and dry and that makes it a very desirable house on that side of town. I met someone whose landlord had given her the minimum amount of notice right before Christmas and she'd had nowhere to go, so she was sleeping on her daughter's couch while her husband, who has a bad back, had to live in their car. And someone else whose place was mouldy and her children had bad asthma and the landlord wouldn't do anything about the pool of standing water under the house. And all I could do was say what rental agency to apply to. My few near neighbours in the new place are all middle-aged white people.
I do love this new house though. All the peace and quiet, the row of pine trees dividing my place from farmland, the grey warblers and tui and moreporks I hear in the trees. I started a bit of a herb garden and I like gardening better now I'm not being squashed by the weight of people's eyes looking at me whenever I'm outside. Moving house was very stressful but living here is taking away a lot of strain I didn't really know I could escape from.
I moved house. I moved from a smallish and cheap house in a noisy street to a beautiful roomy new house on the edge of town. This has been cause for some happiness and some distress. I love living in a really nice house, where the walls are a colour I chose and there are no neighbours zooming up and down the driveway past my window twenty times a day and it's wonderfully quiet and dark at night. I am distressed that not everybody gets this sort of thing. Life isn't fair and that bothers me even when the unfairness in my favour.
I am filled with shame when a person in my life says that I must have been doing a lot of positive thinking to attract such wealth from the Universe. According to her beliefs I wouldn't have received this if I didn't deserve it, and therefore I must be better than her and she'll have to do more affirmations until she deserves it too. This thinking is horrifying to me; being praised for winning at capitalism is not the sort of approval I want.
I'm trying to invent a system of town planning in which everyone can have a bedroom window looking out over trees and croplands instead of streetlights and roads. My ideal town needs to have fractal edges so everyone can live at the edge. Although perhaps there are outgoing types of people who wouldn't mind living in the middle with people all around them. I love being at home and not having to see or hear any people at all.
When the people in my old street heard I was moving out soon, several different people approached me to ask when my moving date was and whether they could move straight in after me. I'm happy to be out of that ticky-tacky box of a house, but it was at least sunny and dry and that makes it a very desirable house on that side of town. I met someone whose landlord had given her the minimum amount of notice right before Christmas and she'd had nowhere to go, so she was sleeping on her daughter's couch while her husband, who has a bad back, had to live in their car. And someone else whose place was mouldy and her children had bad asthma and the landlord wouldn't do anything about the pool of standing water under the house. And all I could do was say what rental agency to apply to. My few near neighbours in the new place are all middle-aged white people.
I do love this new house though. All the peace and quiet, the row of pine trees dividing my place from farmland, the grey warblers and tui and moreporks I hear in the trees. I started a bit of a herb garden and I like gardening better now I'm not being squashed by the weight of people's eyes looking at me whenever I'm outside. Moving house was very stressful but living here is taking away a lot of strain I didn't really know I could escape from.
no subject
I'm glad you're in a house that makes you comfortable.
I love your idea of an ideal fractal city where everyone can be where they are most comfortable.
I agree wiith you about "positive thinking."
no subject
If I put large fractal-shaped parks and reserves inside my city, it can get even more "edge" area! Plus, natural waterways already make the right sort of shapes.
no subject
As someone who doesn't drive, in many ways, I find the idea of vertical, compact, city living ideal. Before I went off to college "for real" I went through six weeks a sort of college training camp in the Bronx (a borough of NYC) for students with disabilities, so we could practice strategies of getting around campus, time management, and dealing with the bureaucracies of "Special Services" My dorm mate and I were the only ones staying on campus. It was noisy, sure. But it was also nice to be able to leave the campus with no other transportation than our wheelchairs, and go down to the local deli for a slice of justly famous, real New York cheesecake.
Really, the only reason I moved to the suburbs was because I needed a living space that was wheelchair accessible for me, who not only uses a wheelchair and needs grab bars and wider doors, but is also nearly a foot shorter than the people of "standard" height for whom all pre-adapted spaces are designed. That's workable, kinda, for occasional use, like restaurant bathrooms, and hotels, but I wouldn't want to live that way 24/7/365. If I'd been able to get a city apartment and customize it, I would have.
On the other hand, I need access to green, living things out my windows. I think, in my make-believe city, I have the roofs of all the high-rises engineered to support vegetable gardens and orchards, and the same for balconies to individual apartments. Some roofs would be reserved for meadow species and grassses -- basically figure out how to build a city with as much green space, as seen from the air, as asphalt. That would help migratory birds, and also allow everyone to "Eat local."