WTF??? Did I miss something? Must everyone own an immaculate BBH? I struggle with words over these monstrosities. I don't begrudge anyone having a wonderful house, but I certainly begrudge our society using these big houses as a standard for being in the white-bread middle class.
Do we really need houses with breakfast nooks, barstools in the kitchen, dining rooms, and full kitchens on the deck? Must everyone have granit countertops? Vaulted ceiling? Grand foyers?
On the outskirts of Austin, there weren't just a few of these houses. These houses went on for MILES.
I am still at a loss of words over these large houses. I wish that I could truly articulate the empty materialism that these homes represent.
Oddly, I find the use of space in these houses offends me the most. I see great amounts of wasted space. We don't merely have bigger houses, but bigger rooms in the houses, making it feel as if we don't have that much more space at all. We have bigger rooms filled with bigger furniture and bigger televisions for smaller social lives and less free time.
We don't have houses. We have fantasy lives. We live in our fantasy houses with our fantasy social lives and our fantasies of upward mobility, all the while being unable to obtain the very things that we profess are important.
One day I may be able to put this into words. In the end, though, there is no difference between us and the investment banks. We both live in the doom that was our own fantasies.
