October 30, 2005

There is a reason posting has been irregular of late.

I don’t quite know how to say this. It will come as a shock to many, if not most, of you; it has certainly come as a shock to me. I considered trying to ease into the news, but all my efforts in that direction proved futile. So I’m just going to give it to you straight, as it were.

Last week, E.S. and I accidentally bought a dilapidated house in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, with the intention of fixing it up ourselves.

I realize that the words “dilapidated,” “Crown Heights,” “Brooklyn,” and “fixing it up ourselves” make no sense in a sentence part of whose subject is me. And yet they’re absolutely true, every one.

(For those of you not familiar with New York City history, Crown Heights is the neighborhood in which, fourteen years ago, a Chasidic man struck and killed a black child with his car and in which, the next day, a mob of black people, enraged at the inadequate medical care the child had received, stabbed an Orthodox Jew to death.)

By “bought” I mean merely “signed a contract to buy”; our ultimate ownership of the house is by no means secure, contingent as it is upon our getting a mortgage, coming up with money for a down payment, and most importantly not recovering the minds we’ve obviously lost.

But once you see the house you will understand why I’m hoping we stay lunatics for just long enough to close (in real estate terms, this means “finish the deal”):

Naturally, we’re leaving the sign up.