If I've seemed a little logey the last weeks it's because we're trying to buy a co-op in Manhattan. Countercultural in itself - leaving Brooklyn for Manhattan?! - the whole process of applying for a mortgage has felt downright phantastical at a time when the president of the United States devotes his days to undermining anyone's confidence in any future. Doing all this while trying to teach about the Anthropocene and Zhuangzi would by itself produce cognitive dissonance aplenty every day of the week. But then there's the infamous "board package," a special kind of torture proudly maintained by the boards of New York City co-ops as flocks of lawyers, accountants, bankers, real estate agents and others fly in lazy circles overhead and scurry about underfoot. (Sorry, but this cringeworthy process demands mixed metaphors.) We've thought we were close to seeing the end of the tunnel many times only to be thrown for another loop by news of another arbitrary requirement nobody had the decency to tell us about before... It's enough to make one dream of joining the Daoists who flee society and all its conventions!Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Dreams of flying the coop
If I've seemed a little logey the last weeks it's because we're trying to buy a co-op in Manhattan. Countercultural in itself - leaving Brooklyn for Manhattan?! - the whole process of applying for a mortgage has felt downright phantastical at a time when the president of the United States devotes his days to undermining anyone's confidence in any future. Doing all this while trying to teach about the Anthropocene and Zhuangzi would by itself produce cognitive dissonance aplenty every day of the week. But then there's the infamous "board package," a special kind of torture proudly maintained by the boards of New York City co-ops as flocks of lawyers, accountants, bankers, real estate agents and others fly in lazy circles overhead and scurry about underfoot. (Sorry, but this cringeworthy process demands mixed metaphors.) We've thought we were close to seeing the end of the tunnel many times only to be thrown for another loop by news of another arbitrary requirement nobody had the decency to tell us about before... It's enough to make one dream of joining the Daoists who flee society and all its conventions!