House & Garden

Hello Gentle Reader,

Home is a complicated matter. In the documentary "Writing Against Terror—The Literature of Herta Müller," Müller states at the end of the documentary:

 

"I think I am done with the concept of home. I don't need it. I can be content and do the things that I care about. I'm not capable of anything more, I don't want anything more. It doesn't even help to have a home. After all, I had a home, but it nearly killed me."

 

Growing up in Nitzkydorf (Romanian: Nițchidorf), a small (then) German speaking village in the Banat region of Romania. Herta Müller, described the claustrophobic atmosphere of the village as the first dictatorship she knew. Every window had an eye. Every doorway a gaze. Every street hummed with vicious flies and news. Gossip and judgement. Any transgression—alleged or otherwise—would be reported and disseminated. No one could step out of line without the village's knowledge. No one could exist without the village knowing. Where you are going. What you are doing. It's all accounted for. Then scrutinized. The local priest, content to draft another sermon regarding the commandment of loving thy neighbour; or thou shalt not steal; or another lengthy discourse regarding the devil's drink. Though it was common knowledge he had a bottle of brandy in his desk drawer. The oppressive depravity and turncoat politics of the village, with all its poverty, its resentment, its dispossession, created an atmosphere that is thick with contempt. Nitzkydorf comes to exist in a perpetual never ending sweltering summer. An oppressive tango of brutal orange heat bearing down and burning the village. The grass, the fields, the crops, the pastures, wilt into withering browns. To quote Herta Müller further:

 

"No cities can grow in a dictatorship, because everything stays small when its being watched."

 

Through continued communal surveillance everything remains small. This is the reality of the rural landscape. Those otherwise mere afterthoughts of the urban centres. In their insularity. Their smug assured moral superiority. The pride in their backwater ways. Their fanatic devotion to singular confirmatory, by conducting aggressive campaigns of affirmation. The defense and preservation of wholesome family values. The rural is a pastiche of polarized perspectives. On one hand are those weathered and tested principles, founded in theological simplicity and Christian preachings of love, kindness, generosity, and charity in spirit and application. While on the other, in both reality and practice is the complete contrary: the unapologetic bigotry; their reactionary political stances oxidizing into paranoid delusions; a strong sense of pride in their anti-intellectual opinions and distrust; all the reveling in their own crassness. This is what makes small towns and villages stagnant in nature. What residents would describe as a stalwart stoicism; others would define it as stifling authoritarianism. In dispossession, desperation thrives. Every village has a bar, and every village bar has its loyalists. An ecosystem of desolate depravity. Finding no fulfillment in work. No comfort at home. They turn to the bar. An establishment which allows them to wash down the day into the night. Just as no cities can grow in a dictatorship; no person can grow in a small town. Despite the expanse and the room, the unrelenting watchfulness root binds every inhabitant, clipping their wings, and shuttering them indoors.

 

In spite of itself, the rural backdrop has shown itself to have a proclivity for being the backdrop to truly universal human dramas. Authors such as Alice Munro, Cormac McCarthy, Flannery O'Connor, and William Faulkner, have shown that truly complex human lives can often be found outside of the urban epicentres. The stories of Alice Munro often hark back to my own roots in the rural landscape. Those otherwise 'open secrets,' the petulant family drama—I still laugh when I think of the reminiscences from "The Love of a Good Woman," when Enid remembers how one dying woman requests to see a serving tray (Munro proves to be an expert ironist), as Enid inflects preconceived notions of sentimentality on the situation, which is abruptly shattered when the woman smashes the tray against the bedpost, proclaiming with spite that her sister won't get her hands on it—such as the familiar venomous dramas, we've all witnessed and spectated at with horror and amusement. While the first section of "The Love of a Good Woman," with its description of the three boys, pulled the closet to home. Especially in the case of Cece Ferns. The quick sketched description of the Ferns home and life is an all to real reality. A drunken useless father, and a mother whose ennui and mental incapacity, creates a home on the brink of implosion. I had encountered many Cece Ferns growing up. Those boys with their blackened eyes; bruises on their arms; their indolent 'tough guy,' attitudes. We shared our lunches with them; tried to befriend them; fought with them. As children their homestyle hell was out of sight. Until one night, I recall, walking by one such house. Neglected is a polite way of calling it run down or a dump. White trash homestead is another word. I recall one unceremonious evening in summer that I was walking home, passing by one such house, when a domestic dispute blew up throughout the house. Due to the heat the windows were open providing the soundtrack to the violence taking place within: screams and yelling of vulgarity; dishes smashing to the floor; through the window a tossed over lamp cast too much light on the wall disfiguring shadows. Not soon after, the son burst through the front door, running down the steps and down the street, the father's pursuit stopped at the front door, his belligerent, venomous, and vulgar shouts chasing after his fleeing son. A ridiculous scene. A pathetic human tragedy. Back then I had never encountered something so violent and unapologetic in its abject abnormality. When I broached my own parents, they shrugged it off with: "the old mans a drunk." That family—like so many other hurricane families—blew in and out of town. What remains sad now, is the lack of concern. How easily this violence was condoned as normal and acceptable.

 

Alice Munro celebrates the peripheral of life. The overlooked and the overgrown. Out there, life plays out without acknowledgement or ceremony. Of course, Munro is a master of the short story, of palpable psychological insights. A writer who has a particular understanding of times passing and its, and who celebrates the beauty of the otherwise ordinary life, in all its extraordinary measures. All the while inspiring one to imagine with empathy, the lives of those strangers, who we encounter day after day, through our shared trivial routines. Even though Alice Munro celebrates the extremely diverse landscape of Canada, and all those small communities in South-Western Ontario, preserved in their family furnishings, it is important to note that Alice Munro also took flight from this same country. Munro and her first husband relocated in her early years to Victoria, on the west coast. When I've returned to visit my own rural roots, where my mother stays on sincere principles founded within sentimentality, "this is my home,"; I find myself offering up unsolicited pity, to those who I grew up with who remain or returned, trapped in some hereditary witch's curse. Ensnared to penurious estates or homes. Rightfully overgrown and overlooked. They've come to exist outside of life. The world had moved on, and had since abandoned them at their meager beginnings.  

 

The rural, however, is not entirely populated by the refuse of the urban centres, spilling out into the nearby countryside, seeking sanctuary within the miniscule. It is true that rural crime is an increasing issue and a matter of public concern; while illicit drug use has always been problematic with these communities; curious though, is how homelessness is emerging as a crisis within rural townships, who lack the adequate services to mitigate and support this otherwise vulnerable population. In turn, however, rural communities have been home to many great people, who found inspiration in their wild surroundings. Many have praised this life out of the way, finding refuge in its solemnity and reflection. Others in turn have been liberated at last. While others have found further ways to explain and explore the world further and all its phenomena. Writers such as Beatrix Potter, Ronald Blythe, John Lewis-Stempel, Len Howard, and Gerbrand Bakker have all celebrated the country living and the rural nature, proving it's not the backdrop to misplaced human misery and unacknowledged tragedy. As for myself, since I was a child, I've longed and dreamt of city life. The city is where life happened. I had questioned both my parents about the decision to relocate and eventually settle in a small town. The truth is and was, it was more affordable upfront, and they wanted to provide an upbringing reminiscent of their own for my sibling and I. Both of my parents lived in equal small rural landscapes throughout their youth. In turn, I think they were attracted to the rural area, not just out of cost analysis, but also out of a sense of never expecting or wanting too much out of life. Everything was tempered with the tint of lowering your expectations. This same perspective became its own leeching curse to my life. Rather than move to the big city, I was steered away to a second-rate suburb. When I had contemplated leaving to another province to a larger city, I was informed that I wouldn't make it. I would be too far and alienated. And so, for my entire adult life, I found myself exiled into yet another form of the margins of life, while dreaming of a richer life elsewhere.

 

If rural is but an afterthought, then the suburbs are meager afterimages of the city. Characterless and charmless wastelands. They exist as parasitic satellites siphoning services and resources off from the larger centre, all the while parading themselves as an 'independent,' city. When asked by a friend, what's the point of this community? What's its draw, its attraction? I said, lower property taxes. Further investigation proved their property taxes were higher than the neighbouring actual city. A friend in horror took stock of everything; after all, this is where I've lived for the majority of my adult life. They remarked on the nothingness. The absolute urban desolation. Nothing beyond grocery stores, and the bare essentials. You don't even have a cinema, they said. Why then did you buy a home here? A question for the past two and a half years, I myself have been forced to reckon with. I've only worked in the suburb—though I have tried to get jobs in the larger city, but have failed to reconcile the commute with the salary—and therefore have found myself remanded here. When evicted from my previous place, as the landlords wanted to sell, I faced the pressure many Canadians find themselves facing: homeownership. It's high time you own your own home. It's time you settled down. You've wasted so much time on renting. You need to get into the housing market. Aren’t you sick and tired of being at the mercy of someone else? These are but a paltry example, of the statements thrown my way regarding the encouragement to enter the housing market. The rentals that were on offer at the time were inflated and best described as 'dives.' Now, Canada faces a double sword crisis in housing, both for those seeking to enter the housing market, and those who are priced out of the rental market. Canada's home ownership dream has become a dehumanizing nightmare.

 

Home is a complicated matter. It is an endeavour one should not undertake lightly. Perhaps, because it's such an illustrious goal, many Canadians strive towards homeownership on the advice of others. Homeownership is even an expectation. One of those milestones one accomplishes throughout their life. It is also one of the most expensive purchases one is going to make. All for that parcel of land, that patch of grass, a roof over one's head. There are many factors which influence homeownership, such as employment. I found myself stuck within the suburb because I worked there, and after following what in hindsight could be considered well-intentioned, but inappropriate advice, I bought there. Within ten months however, my work situation changed. Despite the fact that I was no longer bound to this suburban wasteland, I had voluntarily chained myself there. If I were to impart advice to anyone regarding homeownership, it would be this: a house is not a home. If you hate the place you live, it's not home. Home is your choice, where you chose to reside and settle. It cannot be a directive or order issued to you by anyone else. It must be your own enterprise, one in which you've decided. There will be other deciding factors leveraged against you, rest assured. You'll need work and income. Your home will need to be affordable. But what makes it a home is that you are content with it. It is the place you run towards, not away from. To which I encourage all those considering the plunge of homeownership: live. Homeownership will inevitably tie you down, limit your options, and take up a fair bit of money, through renovations, repairs, and mortgage payments.

 

Despite my regret and resentment with my own experience in homeownership, I like many other Canadians still dream of a house and garden. The beauty of dreams, is they are specific, fitting those wonderful niche roles, one unconcerned with the practicalities of life. Unburned with the trivialities of homeownership. Browsing through real estate listings has become an act of catharsis, providing the fuel and the homes to envision and dream oneself living in. In a matter similar to Deborah Levy in her living autobiographical series, I too ponder real estate, and contemplate all the lessons learned. Canadians, it seems, have been conditioned to dream of a house and garden; that house with its white picket fence, picturesque in its quaint sense of cliche perfection. A home to lay down roots. A home to call one's own. In my experience, it’s a little overrated. Though in turn, with the current housing climate reaching impossible levels, what would have been the alternative for that in-between of ten months? In truth, it doesn't matter. So, we return to dreams; flights of fantasy; to better worlds, and more favourable notions of reality; to houses with carefree gardens, where unburdened and unshackled, one is liberated with a thirst for life.

 

Thank you for reading Gentle Reader

Take Care

And As Always

Stay Well Read

 

M. Mary