the illusion of permanence

Yesterday, while making the usual doomed round of open houses, something unusual happened: We saw an apartment that was more or less in our price range that wasn't ghastly, impossibly tiny, closetless, a fifth-floor walkup, etc. It was atually sort of nice, a place one (well, three, actually: two full-size adults, plus a small dog) could imagine living. What changed? We didn't get richer; the popping of the housing bubble, long-awaited, did not occur. No, we simply looked in a different neighborhood.

I have long ago given up the dream of buying an apartment in Manhattan, if I ever had that dream. Now I am working on giving up the dream of buying an apartment in the vicinty of where I live now, Cobble Hill/Brooklyn Heights/Carroll Gardens. That's harder to give up, because it's less abstract; I live here already, and I like it. To the extent I belong anywhere, it's here. In the year and not quite a half we have been here I have grown all too attached to the streets, the view of the harbor from the Promendae, to Sahadi's, to the Yeminis and the Italians and the hipsters. The dog knows his way to the three pet-food stores in walking distance; his vet is literally around the corner. I feel a visceral attachment to the place that may seem strange. But perhaps having given up so much that was incredibly familiar in North Carolina, it is hard to think about doing so again. Even to move two miles to the southeast, to Park Slope.

Park Slope! It's a very nice place, with tree-lined streets of stately brownstones and, as the name implies, a nice park. It's two miles farther from Manhattan than where I live now, meaning more stops on the subway, a heftier taxi fare in the middle of the night. That would be OK, I guess, but it's not home. Plus something in me resists the idea of moving to Park Slope, as surely as I resist the idea of moving to Montclair, N.J. It's so much what someone in my situation would be expected to do; it is utterly unoriginal. But what can I do? I don't have the guts to move to an "emerging" neighborhood like SoBro or Gowanus: I want to live someplace already emerged, where there are bookstores, grocers and other signs of human habitation.

I like this neighborhood and have even grown fond of this eccentric apartment, in a way. But life has a transitory, makeshift quality, a sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop. That's how renting is. I think that once you have been a homeowner, going back to renting is hard. It feels lame. But how much are we prepared to sacrifice to own again? 200 square feet? 2 extra miles of commuting? Even writing these words, I sense their utter ridiculousness, how unreal New York is, that livability hinges on such things.

But part of me wants to just move somewhere and say, "That's it! We're staying!" Screwed down for life, in the immortal phrase of John Irving's "The Hotel New Hampshire." What's funny is I want this even knowing it's an illusion.

And yes, I know, some people have real problems, not the fake kind I have. Like explosives raining on their homes. Or being homeless.