Sunday, August 27, 2000

 

1:02 a.m. Interesting day, today. We've started in again to look at other people's houses, room by room, on Sundays. There are a couple of reasons for this.

First of all, I'm doing some valuable research for a novel I'm beginning, and walking in and out of wide-open front doors is necessary to get into the right frame of mind. The second reason is harder to name -- let's just say that it never hurts to look, and to keep your options open.

It's a duck eat duck world out there ... that nasty old pecking order -- is there ever enough to go around? Is there someone right behind you grabbing at your fair share? Or is it just my imagination?

My Sunday open house scheme has always been very simple and straightforward. Circle a few promising addresses, plot a route from start to finish, and then clear my mind of all distracting thoughts. Pick a few houses in the lowest price-range possible, a few in the middle area, and of course -- one or two at the top, for that all-important stretch factor. And then let the experience take me away.

It always does.

And there will always, always, always be people with more money than yourself. That's a fact of life, unless you're Bill Gates, and having the most paper money on this watery earth is just too weird a concept to linger on, so we won't. It's also not a good idea to linger too long on why, or how, either.

And that's where I get into trouble. I enter houses that I cannot afford, and I usually cannot understand why. The air isn't thinner in these houses -- the people who live in them breathe the same atmosphere as I do. They are not aliens. So, what gives? Up pops that nasty question: How?

The walls are never covered with plaques and awards and achievements and any of the other many clues that might tell me why -- or how. What combination of luck and breeding and talents elevated these people to such levels? Why does this woman have so many shoes? And why are they, literally, not down at the heels?

Ah, yes. There will always be royalty, and kings and queens. And unless the people who switched me at birth show up, soon, with my rightful princess papers, I'm going to have to accept the concept that I'm not one of them.

Lucky for me, there are an awful lot of cottages in this part of the world. Simple, commoner dwellings, low-ceilinged and really quite cozy. With maybe a little hearth if I'm lucky, where I can burn all those rough drafts as I dream my way to that big and airy castle in the sky, my true and rightful home.

Tonight's entry has been brought to you, courtesy of the topic gremlins of the On Display round-robin collab. It was based on an entry from Clio (go, read, enjoy!) and now, I'm handing handing it off to the lovely Di. And so the ring goes round and round and round.

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