To Sell a House
07/11/10 17:26
So the latest hopeful deal on selling the house I lived in for 15 years fell through a few days ago, leaving nothing to go on with but faint fumes of hope... Realtor seems nearly as depressed about the situation as I am. So what to do, before 2010’s selling season is gone and we’re back to the glacially slow times of late autumn. Sigh. How many dark nights of the soul can I go through over the necessity of selling a good, nicely remodeled home as quickly as possible? Potential buyers are few and far between in this difficult buyer’s market, all right. Yet 10-11 of them have “really liked your house,” according to the realtor. Her cautionary words after the most recent failure to move the place: "This is the worst market I have seen. People are scared and moving slowly. Mortgage granters are being completely ridiculous making qualifying difficult." Seems Robert Frost was dead on when he wrote, albeit in another context, “Nothing gold can stay.”
What do you do when you’ve got nothing in the bank to pay all these bills and it looks as though you’re about to lose the good credit you spent your life building up? When the last lonely little bills of the family funds you were left twenty years ago are about to fly out of your hands and into the wide, wide world of unpaid bills?
“As you have faith, so shall your powers and blessings be. This is the balance, this is the balance. This is the balance.” Thus said ‘Abdu’l-Baha, known among Baha’is as “The Mystery of God.”
So you fan the flames of faith with prayers and meditation every day. You ask the good Lord to send you some darn good ideas to cope with the darn hefty tests He’s passed your way. You make some pounding inspiring rock music playlists featuring the likes of Rob Thomas belting out:
This is it now
Everybody get down
This is all I can take
This is how a heart breaks
For good measure throw in a bit of Flogging Molly: Swing a little more, little more o'er the merry-o, Swing a little more, on the Devil's Dance Floor
Keeps the toes tapping and the mind from sinking too very low. Good as long as the music lasts, but what’s to get you through those dark nights when worries swoop around your head like crazy flying nightjars chasing invisible bugs at twilight?
Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” swoops around with the nightjars. Alternating with bits of Brahm’s most beautiful “German Requiem.” Which, unlike numerous other requiems, draws its text from the German Luther Bible. For which I spend a moment or two thanking Herr Brahms whenever I hear this.
You take solace, but never pleasure, in knowing how not alone you are in your predicament. That innumerable fellow human beings are facing tougher times than this during the current economic pits.
You get together with fellow Baha’is as often as possible. Which is not often enough.
You laugh uproariously at the wild ways of the one little dog you now have in your life. Sigh and bite your tongue when she chews up something you’d rather she hadn’t.
You follow the financial news as often as your spirits allow. Which gets to be less and less.
You notice that you have rather fewer friends than you did when all this down spiral began. Another sigh for what you can’t change. And a big smile for the ones still squarely there.
When there’s something pleasant to be done you stretch it out, maybe come and go with it a couple of times so you can anticipate the fun of getting into it again. When there’s something that’s just No Fun -- say paying bills -- you zip through it at warp speed and think about it no more than necessary. Kind of like having blood drawn.
Last night I had a dream. In time, this will turn out to be a prescient dream, I think. I found myself with a gigantic wasp on my back. So big that its head was touching the back of my neck and a back claw dug into my left butt. It had been contained nicely in a cage, before I accidentally let it out while reaching in to clear away debris. Items like broken old asphalt shingle pieces floating in puddles. A woman stood somewhere close by, seemingly unable to come to my rescue. Eventually a man, average looking and in loose clothing, youngish, appeared. Rather quietly he removed the wasp from my back with no fear at all, and got it back into its cage. There it took on the appearance of having black fur, rather like that on Willy-chu, the too powerful dog I was recently forced to part with. When I woke up and reflected over this dream -- in full color as it was -- it was clear that this was about the house situation. On my back like an oversized wasp that might suddenly sting me into oblivion.
So whatever the path ahead, that dream gave me the feeling that things are going to turn out just fine at the end of the story.
What do you do when you’ve got nothing in the bank to pay all these bills and it looks as though you’re about to lose the good credit you spent your life building up? When the last lonely little bills of the family funds you were left twenty years ago are about to fly out of your hands and into the wide, wide world of unpaid bills?
“As you have faith, so shall your powers and blessings be. This is the balance, this is the balance. This is the balance.” Thus said ‘Abdu’l-Baha, known among Baha’is as “The Mystery of God.”
So you fan the flames of faith with prayers and meditation every day. You ask the good Lord to send you some darn good ideas to cope with the darn hefty tests He’s passed your way. You make some pounding inspiring rock music playlists featuring the likes of Rob Thomas belting out:
This is it now
Everybody get down
This is all I can take
This is how a heart breaks
For good measure throw in a bit of Flogging Molly: Swing a little more, little more o'er the merry-o, Swing a little more, on the Devil's Dance Floor
Keeps the toes tapping and the mind from sinking too very low. Good as long as the music lasts, but what’s to get you through those dark nights when worries swoop around your head like crazy flying nightjars chasing invisible bugs at twilight?
Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” swoops around with the nightjars. Alternating with bits of Brahm’s most beautiful “German Requiem.” Which, unlike numerous other requiems, draws its text from the German Luther Bible. For which I spend a moment or two thanking Herr Brahms whenever I hear this.
You take solace, but never pleasure, in knowing how not alone you are in your predicament. That innumerable fellow human beings are facing tougher times than this during the current economic pits.
You get together with fellow Baha’is as often as possible. Which is not often enough.
You laugh uproariously at the wild ways of the one little dog you now have in your life. Sigh and bite your tongue when she chews up something you’d rather she hadn’t.
You follow the financial news as often as your spirits allow. Which gets to be less and less.
You notice that you have rather fewer friends than you did when all this down spiral began. Another sigh for what you can’t change. And a big smile for the ones still squarely there.
When there’s something pleasant to be done you stretch it out, maybe come and go with it a couple of times so you can anticipate the fun of getting into it again. When there’s something that’s just No Fun -- say paying bills -- you zip through it at warp speed and think about it no more than necessary. Kind of like having blood drawn.
Last night I had a dream. In time, this will turn out to be a prescient dream, I think. I found myself with a gigantic wasp on my back. So big that its head was touching the back of my neck and a back claw dug into my left butt. It had been contained nicely in a cage, before I accidentally let it out while reaching in to clear away debris. Items like broken old asphalt shingle pieces floating in puddles. A woman stood somewhere close by, seemingly unable to come to my rescue. Eventually a man, average looking and in loose clothing, youngish, appeared. Rather quietly he removed the wasp from my back with no fear at all, and got it back into its cage. There it took on the appearance of having black fur, rather like that on Willy-chu, the too powerful dog I was recently forced to part with. When I woke up and reflected over this dream -- in full color as it was -- it was clear that this was about the house situation. On my back like an oversized wasp that might suddenly sting me into oblivion.
So whatever the path ahead, that dream gave me the feeling that things are going to turn out just fine at the end of the story.
