Closing Time!

Remember that song Closing Time that played about every five seconds in the late nineties? Me too. After a while, it really sucked. However, as it will be our first time actually closing on a house on Thursday we're pretty excited. Excited enough to have conversations about contractors, painting days, and to start the playlist for the eighties montage. (Video below. Why is that one guy shirtless? further below).



That's right. After seven months, (it was probably shorter but who really wants to count) we are finally going to own a lovely home in the Brightwood district of DC. Look forward to an upcoming profile of the clown and balloon store in the nearby neighborhood. I believe the motto is, "Just when you thought we couldn't turn a semi-seedy downtown district any worse." I think they should have gone with something like, "Guns don't kill people. Clowns kill people." Or, "do you like that balloon animal that I just made little Jimmy, because I'm going to haunt your dreams for the next seven years of your life. No that's not booze you smell on my breath...it's fun!" All this to commence before turning into a spider.

Samples from my first day of yoga.
Instructor: Now breathe into your heart. Now breathe into the place where all of your kindness resides. Feel yourself at one with the kindness. You are feeling warm and kind.
M: I can't believe people call this new-agey.

In the end what really matters is that we did something. Sure we didn't build a bridge or land on the moon, or feed the hungry, or shelter the homeless, but I think we can safely say that we did something much more important. We spent a great deal of energy/time/financial resources on buying ourselves something. In the end, isn't that what life is about? (Yes, Howard's End, and all of the homes that we grew up in as children argue against this sort of rhetoric. It's not that a house is meaningless, it's that in the end the rather self-focused search for one is exhausting. Not that we've shown that we're capable of much more in general.)

Because poetry is good for the soul:
Desmond O'Grady Pillow Talk

And, out of the light's agony
leaving behind all past destruction,
let us lie down again on that old bed
steadfast under the bamboo and seaweed ceiling,
opening glad white arms to one another.

Then let me tell you all that story
That's the skill of survival in the daily struggle:
the blow's given, the beatings taken,
of wandering for years and of wins and losses
in the search not to end a destroyer.

While I watch over you, let down your long hair
to shadow your shoulders before sleep
for all this place shall break
and fall apart should you go absent.


Conversation:

M: Go to your heart center S I think you'll find some kindness there.
S: My heart center is just angry.

No more apologies. We bought a house and we're going to paint the bedrooms blue. We're going to cut holes in walls and polish floors. We're going to talk about the potential of the bar. We're going to get older there. We're going to watch the years pass by without realizing how quickly they leave us. We're going to sleep in a quiet blue room. We're going to sit in the yellow room and look out the small window while it rains. We're going to watch our dreams come to nothing without every realizing we had them. We're going to paint rooms bright colors so that we forget that we're sad. We're going to sit in blue rooms in blue moods. We'll paint the walls of small rooms in bright colors so that we won't feel them closing in on us. We're going to watch the dreams of others from just beyond the doorway. We're going to talk about moving. We're going to read Island of the blue dolphins to our children in blue rooms. We're going to watch the newly finished floors begin to change back again. We're going to read that strange section in "To the Lighthouse" in the basement below our blue rooms. We're going to be the same as everyone else. We're going to buy a house and fill it with things. We're going to talk about the proper place to put a bookshelf. We're going to take our shoes off at the door to preserve the new floors. We're going to talk about children, and realize how strange it is that we can remember our own childhoods. We're going to put up a private fence and shut out the whole world. We're going to sleep in a big bed beneath heavy blue dreams.

I hope to see you all there at the house warming party. According to S that will be sometime in the next century when we're finally feeling settled. Eighties montage clean up time.