rant: Housing.
It wasn’t till about 2006 that I understood what a mortgage was. Sure, I understood that homes were bought with loans, but I didn’t know the greater significance of a “mortgage.”
As in “I qualified for a mortgage” (2006) or “I can’t make my mortgage” (2009).
I just read a New Yorker article on bankruptcy, something I’ve known about all my life (with parents who were constantly threatened by it in their failing business as a car parts resaler). However, “default” is another neologism I’ve only recently appreciated. It was supposed to be a noun (as in “it’s a default solution”), and now it’s a verb (as in “he’s defaulted his mortgage.”).
These terms annoy me because they are sophistic masquerades for a primitive problem—money.
Furthermore, they (and a couple personal problems) are why I loathe the idea of Park Slope. So permit me the second it takes Park Slope residents to look my Tumblr in the eye and say “good riddance” to me, before I explain what I mean.
(:01)
I believe that “Mortgage” is as treacherous a euphemism for “home” as Park Slope is a treacherous symbol of “neighborhood.”
The primary purpose of a shelter is… well… to shelter. The concept of a mortgage depresses me because they prove the primary purpose of a shelter should be to create value. Similarly, a neighborhood is an arbitrary demarcation of a tract of shelters, but Park Slope proves it’s supposed to be something else. That the symbolism of it is greater than the parts of its whole truly saddens me. In the same way that Chelsea represents a personality or “The Village” evokes a particular time and politic notwithstanding the geography, “Park Slope” is bigger than an incident. However, its symbolism has to do precisely with neighborhoodedness, making living there more than, and therefore actually less than, just living there.
Rather than find affordable status, what about just not caring about the symbolism anymore.
