Twice this summer I have house-sat (or, more precisely, dog-sat) for my uncle. His family doesn’t like sending their dogs to the kennel when they go on vacation and it is a way for me to earn a bit of money. People who hear of this say, “Oh, so you get a vacation too” but it isn’t, unless you consider going to a different house and doing exactly the same things you do at your house a vacation. The most you can say is that it removes me from the daily activities of life so I have less interruptions of my work.
If my house sitting isn’t a vacation by the definition of “do no work,” it is a departure from my normal life. Instead of living in a rowdy, run-down, rural house I spend a week living alone in a empty, modern, suburban house. Instead of a diet consisting largely of homemade foods, I have an array of modern life set before me. In some ways it is a cultural experience.
The Food
Alone in a house and trying to get work done, food is a primary excuse for distraction. If I am not so busy working that I don’t want to stop to eat, then I don’t want to work and I am busy poking around in cupboards and freezers for something “good” to eat as a distraction and delaying tactic. Thus in the course of this summer I have sampled some of the culinary fare of modern America.
When all is said and done, I prefer my normal diet. Pringles potato chips seem to be of ubiquitous fame, and some childish part of me has always wanted to try some. At last my chance had come–tube container after tube container faced me, but I ended up less than impressed. After eating a few chips I couldn’t understand how Pringles was in business, much less so famous, and had no interest in eating any more. Their taste struck me as “dead.”
In general the pre-packaged food fell into three categories: too salty, too sweet, and too fatty. Pop-tarts are kinda gross–it’s like a sugar cookie. Power bars are like tasteless somewhat sweet bits of nothing. Their granola-like nature nowhere compares to the homemade granola I am accustomed to eating for breakfast. Potato chips (except Pringles!) and similar salted fare (especially Cheeze-Zit types) can be extremely addictive in momentary splurges, but I found they made me feel perpetually over-salted, and thirsty.
For the time of my sojourn I indulge in various forms of fatty, sweet, and salty foods but at the end of it all I was ready to go back to my own food. There was no lasting allure. Give me my homemade granola, and homemade bread.
Well, okay, my one weakness was dairy products. There was this one brand of ice cream in the house which I could perpetually eat too much, and I never seemed to tire of knocking back a fudgesicle or two. But the all-time killer was yogurt. There was a large tub of vanilla yogurt which more than anything else was not too sweet, salty, or fatty. It was delicious in every way. I found it was absolutely fantastic to take slices of cantaloupe melon and dunk them into the vanilla yogurt before consuming. I could have eaten an entire cantaloupe that way. By an extreme act of self-restraint I made the cantaloupe last several days. On the day when the last slice of cantaloupe disappeared I saw I still had half a tub of yogurt left. It called to me. “What the heck,” I thought. I got a spoon, sat down, and ate the entire half tub in a few minutes. I don’t know how many “servings” that was, but it was more than an person ought to eat in one sitting. I think it might have–ahem–affected my digestive tract. But that is one thing I could see myself doing again . . . and again . . . and again. You can keep all your potato chips, pop-tarts, and power bars. I’ll take the yogurt.
That Suburban Life
The suburban life fascinates me. Not in the sense that I wish to live it–I don’t. But I find myself staring. I could stand on the curb and stare and stare with some strange little smile on my face. Suburbia is like some psychotic faux reality. Everything. Is. So. Perfect. At least, that is how it appears. On the surface. The perfection of neat and new houses with their perfect lawns, perfect driveways, perfect flower gardens, perfect cars, and . . . well, whatever else you might see. But I look and I see this vivid manifestation of the neurotic desire deep in all of us to have life completely under our control. Here in suburbia the neurosis is proudly on display. We revel in building up our delusions with a cheap veneer. Victory has been achieved–the organic has been made synthetic–at least, if one looks are the careful lawns, careful bushes, and careful trees it seems so. Nothing is ugly . . . but then, neither is anything truly beautiful.
The reality is that the world overflows its boundaries and defies control. Suburbia pushes the visible manifestations of “real life” to the boundaries where we only venture out in our pretty cars with air-conditioning. That way, life doesn’t intrude with all of it’s uncontrollable reality. But here at home the lawn isn’t manicured, or edged. And beyond that ragged lawn the field of weeds spreads on until the forest rises in an untamed wall. The driveway is just washed out rocks, the cars are a little bit rusty and obviously haven’t been washed in a while. The house is in a continual state of being repaired, and the remains of various projects lay around everywhere. Messy. Out of control.
But I see life.
To me, suburban life is dead. It, in effect, tells us all the lies we want to hear, and want to believe: That life is certain, that life is under control, and that life isn’t (in some part) ugly. You take away all the messy, you take away all of the unfinished-still-working-on-it. Take away the I’m-going-somewhere-but-haven’t-got-there-yet, take away the doing-something . . . when you take all that away you’ve taken away the life. You’ve taken away the fun. Uniformity and control come at a cost. That price some people will gladly pay. For me such a life would start out funny: “Look at the game we’re playing. It’s called ‘House.’” Only to grow wearying: “If I see another manicured lawn that looks like the last lawn, or another house that looks like the last house, I am going to scream!” Finally to a depressing slow strangulation of death: there is no meaning, no comfort, and no hope in riding in your nice new cars, to your nice new houses, so you can use your nice new stuff.
But apparently that is the American Dream.
Comments on this entry are closed.