I've been in Miami since Thursday night visiting Patricia.
The biggest difference I can see in being here is the spread-out-ness of life. Although I guess I'm comparing the suburbs of Miami to the urban multi-families of Cambridge, which ranked as the 30th densest city in the U.S. in the 2000 U.S. Census at >15,000 people per square mile**.
Today, Monday, is the second day I stayed at home (Friday was the first), while Patricia was at work. One thing I noticed is the quietness and deadness. For the first time in ages, I've been the only person in a building. At least at home, when my 5 roommates are all out, there's still like 6 other people living in the house in the lower apartments. Plus at my office in work, I have a partner in my company that shares an office with me, and one of my best friends from college has an office next door. I realize I'm surrounded by people. Also, everything's close together. My office is a 7 minute walk from my house, and my church is a 10 minute walk from both my house and my office. And Trader Joe's is in between everything. And walking around between those four places, I'm always walking around people I know in the neighborhood, or just around people period.
Coming out to the 'burbs here, I feel like I'm in a foreign land, moreso than when I was in Japan a couple weeks ago. The lack of people is just really odd to me, and makes me feel this strange vacancy inside. Like I don't know what to do with myself.
I found myself just walking around the house today, not knowing what to do. I watched the premier of V on Hulu, and then did some work, which ate up most of the afternoon. But the lack of people is really eerie. I think part of it is also my inherent inertia to get outside when I'm by myself. If I have people to play with, I'll get myself out fishing or bowling or playing sports non-stop. But without anyone, I just ended up sitting at home.
I wonder if this means I'm stuck living in Boston, or a place that's at least as dense as Boston on the Census list. Though I could live anywhere if a few friends and their families all lived together in a giant apartment complex or house, with kids and parents and grandparents all running around. Though it is fascinating after living in Cambridge my whole married life, to be sitting around at home waiting for the wife to come back. I could totally understand now why in all the TV shows and movies that there's always one spouse waiting at home for their busy other half, and always a deep sadness or frustration or anger when the other half is late due to work. I'm so used to Patricia just chatting up the roommates, or me just hanging out with friends at work or roommates at home such that we never even notice when the other half doesn't come home.
Phew, the landlord just came home, and is rummaging around talking on the phone really loudly and cooking food. Things feel almost normal with just that extra noise... Time to go shopping for groceries and be around even more people, and then wait for the wife to come home!
** I actually looked up the numbers on the densest cities, and much to my chagrin, realized I've been spouting false statistics to all my friends. I said that Somerville was the densest city in the U.S. Ha! It's only #17, and is in fact only the densest city in Massachusetts. I also said that Cambridge was one of the top five densest cities in the U.S., and again, it's only the top five in Cambridge. It'll take some work to disseminate the proper statistics to everyone I misled. Arghh!!
Christian simplicity is not just a faddish attempt to respond to the ecological holocaust threatens to engulf us, nor is it born out of a frustration with technocratic obesity. It is a call given to every Christian. The witness to simplicity is profoundly rooted in the biblical tradition, and most perfectly exemplified in the life of Jesus Christ. In one form or another, all the devotional masters have stressed its essential nature. It is a natural and necessary outflow of the Good New of the Gospel having taken root in our lives.
Other forms of religion and meditative exercise have focused on simplicity throughout the ages. From Buddhist principles of prayer and diet to the practices in Yoga, Alexander Technique, and barefoot running, making things simpler in life is a common theme in today's world. These practices focus on removing distractions from the body's motion, and bringing the body back to the movements that nature (or God) designed them to use. In the area of just diet alone, there are a plethora of books pushing people to move away from processed foods and hormone and antibiotic-infested beef. People preach the benefits of eating less, and nations like Russia struggle with getting their citizens to stop drinking.
Ironically, it seems to me that the mainstream faith of America has ironically taken all forms of simplicity and labeled any movement in faith towards simplicity as a sect or a fringe movement, or just some liberal hippy fad. I've definitely ribbed my good share of friends who have moved into the raw food world and simple living world. But lately I've been wondering differently, and it's technology that makes me wonder.
I had trouble sleeping after a recent vacation to Japan, and speaking with a psychologist friend started me down this idea of fasting from electronic media. This friend mentioned that in colleges, counseling centers deal with a lot of students that can't sleep and have manic episodes. She said this actually stems a lot from video games, since as kids get into video games, they just don't sleep and they're also in a highly stimulated state. I thought about this, and realized that Hulu with its wonderful shows (currently I'm hooked on Castle, Lie to Me and House) was keeping me up, and in conjunction with jet lag, I was getting myself into somewhat of a manic state of not sleeping and just being stimulated. So I decided to try fasting from all media that tends to distract me. So since Sunday, I've been leaving my pda-phone, my laptop, and my ipod in the office. I have no computer at home, and a while back, I installed a TV lock on the tvs in my apartment**. I have another cell phone with no internet access, so I can still talk on the phone and text people. I don't like talking on the phone, so I didn't count it as a source of distraction. I also returned any dramatic fiction I had lying around to the library, and only have books related to work or Pulitzer prize winning non-fiction lying around (I tend to find prize-winning books the hardest to get sucked into).
The first couple days were rough. I'd come home from work or church, and I'd start looking around for some stimulation. There was no TV, so I had to think about Hulu. But then I realized there was no computer in the house I had access to, so then I started to wonder if I had any DVDs to watch. But then the TV is locked, so that is a no go as well. Then I just sat on the couch, confused, not knowing what to do with myself. I felt like I'd lost a part of myself, and felt my subconscious constantly looking for that something. Then I started wandering around the house, and ended up (1) talking to 3 roommates, (2) putzing around cleaning random things I hadn't cleaned in months, and (3) sleeping. I realized that usually, I had easy ways to entertain myself at home when I had no social plans, so I never got to the things that had higher barriers of entry, things like cleaning and other proactive things.
I'm on day 5 now of the fast, and I'm finding a lot of changes. I've gotten into the habit of keeping a yellow legal notepad in my room, so I can write down everything I need to do the next day. I tear off the page when I come to work in the morning, and then I proceed to tackle every item--mostly emails I thought of, but also calendaring things for work that came to mind while I was putzing around the house. I also find that I'm sleeping a lot more--instead of coming home and watching Hulu before going out with friends, I come home, and either lie down or take a nap for an hour or two. The most surprising thing is that I realize I'm not missing out on anything--that emails aren't so important that I have to read them every 5 minutes, and sports scores can wait. This is the first week in recent memory where I haven't read every single article on ESPN and Nytimes and Boston.com.
I'm going to see how long I can keep this up. So far, it seems an improvement over my previous lifestyle. I feel like maybe how an alcoholic might feel going clean for a while, and realizing the benefits of not being in a drunken stupor all the time. For me, the stupor is one of being inundated with mass media and its goal of mindless stimulation and advertisements, and going clean seems to awaken a deeper sense of self and spirituality, and a slowing down of life around me.
I've struggled with food my entire life, and it's fascinating to see the same principles in eating (not keeping junk food or ice cream in the house, spending more money to eat healthier things and ironically to help me eat less) seem to apply to consumption of media (not keeping media in the house, spending more money to have an internet-less phone and TV lock). Spending more money to help consume less, spending more energy to help save energy--it's counterintuitive to me, but maybe that's the way the life in America will be going in the long run, as we move more and more away from survival mentality and more into self-checking and holding back ourselves from consuming the unlimited amounts of food and media before us.
** Incidentally, the TV thing is a age-old struggle of idealism for me--I've always wanted to live in a house with no TV, and the years that I did get to out of college with like-minded friends, I thought it was awesome. But now, I haven't been able to convince all the roommates (problem with having 5 roommates, hard to get consensus) to give up television, so I had to resort to the TV lock, which with an actual key and lock makes it impossible to get electrical power to the TV unless you have the code or the key, both of which I gave to a roommate, who then distributed the code to everyone else but me.
random funny commercial--we were at this bar last night watching a world cup soccer game. a commercial comes on, and there's this side shot of a woman on the right side, not sexual (wearing a loose-fitting shirt), but definitely not a small breasted woman. it's somewhat zoomed in, such that the woman's torso (neck line to waist) fills the screen. then this boy comes running in out of nowhere and and buries her face in her breast, and there's some jiggling. i hear a guy at the table behind us exclaiming in korean, "what the hell is that?", and me and billy are wondering too, and not even laughing, it's such a weird scene. the bar's kinda quiet with curiousity/shock. then the picture shifts to an air bag deploying, and it turns out to be a commercial about air bag safety. the bar erupts in laughter.
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Been surfing the net regarding small living, or living in
small spaces.
I've always had this desire to live around tons of
people. When I was a kid, I slept best when my parents had tons of people
over in our 3-bedroom ranch house where I could leave the door open with the
lights on and sleep with the noise of loud koreans laughing and yelling all
night. Lately, I've been thinking that small living is the only way to be
around lots of people.
I remember when I was living with PK and BC I was
debating whether to buy a multi-family in Somerville or Dorchester, since it’d
be cheaper. PK insisted on just
staying in Cambridge, and BC said that people all have a choice on whether to
live in Cambridge or somewhere cheaper—in fact, BC said, it’s not that anywhere
is cheaper, it’s just that living in Cambridge would be smaller for the same
price.You have to choose between living
near people or living in a larger space.
There’s lots of problems with big living both ideologically
and practically.Generally, to live big,
one needs to live in the suburbs.Around
Boston, the suburbs have a long history of exclusive zoning, from one- to
two-acre minimum lot sizes for single family homes, forbidding multi-family
homes, or just building moratoriums which basically say only those that have
been able to buy houses are allowed to keep living in houses.There’s a reason why there’s so few blacks
and other minorities in the suburbs.
Practically speaking, suburbs seem to breed loneliness and
time-wasting.Time wasting in having to
mow giant lawns, maintain landscaping, and doing exterior maintenance.In multi-family dwellings, all those things
are split among multiple families, and generally since the lots and homes are
smaller, there’s just less to have to waste time on.Shared community spaces are much more
practical, with parks and open space interspersed around multi-families and
high-rises.My sister had a baby last
year, and living downstairs of us, she and her husband would naturally just
come upstairs, or we’d go downstairs, and hang out regardless of whether the
baby was awake or asleep.In the
suburbs, that would happen more rarely, and if I had my own baby, probably only
when the babies were awake, since once the babies are put to bed, you can’t
leave the kid at home and just drive over to a friend’s house.But in a multi-unit building, you can just
lock your door and carry the baby monitor over to your friend’s apartment and
hang out.
While we become dulled to the wonders
of our new houses over time, we never get used to ongoing irritations, like
tailgaters, or gridlock, or missing dinner with the family. And there is plenty
of irritation to be had: the average Canadian now spends nearly twelve full
days a year travelling between work and home.
I’ve been tempted by the suburbs myself. With their wide lawns and cul-de-sacs,
they seem to offer a rough approximation of the pastoral landscapes that made
our ancestors feel safe. This is an illusion. In the US, at least, people who
live in low-density sprawl are more likely to die violently than their
inner-city cousins — thanks mostly to car accidents. Meanwhile, a Columbia
University study found that suburban kids are far more likely to get hooked on
drugs and booze. Why? Not enough chill-out time with their parents, for one
thing. And where are suburban parents in those crucial after-school hours?
Drumming their dashboards on marathon commutes home from distant offices. We
are fooled by the suburbs’ verdant disguise, even as they lock us into more
dangerous lives.
When I was working at a large company, I started to see my
roommates and minority friends mostly working in the city seeming to have happy
commutes.They’d actually run into each
other on the subway sometimes, and most definitely when they got off at the
same T-station since we all lived on the same subway stop.I’d be stuck in traffic for up to two hours a
day.I tried to find a job in the city
to avoid having to drive, and then eventually just switched careers (for more
reasons that commuting, but commuting was one of them).I now work, live, and church all within a
half-mile radius circle.
The main problem at this point is trying to see if this
lifestyle is feasible in the long run.If I had to, say, raise 4 kids in my current lifestyle, I’d need a
6-bedroom condo, which in this area would mean around 2000 or more sqft, which
would cost an exorbitant amount.I hate
the idea of working to pay off a mortgage or pay rent.If I can cut down that figure to around 1400
sqft, it’s a bit more feasible.I also
just like the idea of small living—having few belongings, getting out of the
house a lot, traveling, etc.Another
dynamic is community, in trying to live in a place that others can live as
well.For me the biggest factors in
choosing a long-term location are being able to live in the same building or
next door with a bunch of close friends that share my values, good schools for
any future children, and a large enough percentage of Asian Americans (minimum
20%) in the school system such that my kids can avoid as much minority-culture
upbringing as possible.
To people who’ve never done it,
small-space living often sounds cramped and uncomfortable. Certainly it can
become that way in a structure that’s poorly designed or if you get sloppy in
your living habits.
But be clever and conscientious and
you can have a very nice little life while saving a bundle, not only on
construction, but on heating, air conditioning, maintenance, and furnishing. Oh
yes, and on top of everything else, you’ll be giving the taxers a whole lot
less to tax than your neighbors who’re building those 2,225 square-foot
palaces.
If you live with other people, work
with their needs, not against them… My husband likes to come home from work and
empty his pockets into a basket. If I don't give him a proper place, he'll
start leaving things in other places which suit him… If you live with someone and they constantly
do something untidy or fail to put things away, you're probably fighting an
uphill battle to get them to do it your way and are better off adjusting the
way things are arranged to make it easier for them. This is a far bigger issue
in small places because we have less completely private space.
