Kansas, or, The Medina of Nowhere

Mum’s tame bank manager thinks I should buy a home. The government is so convinced I should get into property that it’s offering cash incentives. I haven’t checked with the local cabbies, but I’m sure if I asked, they’d point out that houses have always been a solid investment. Paul Clitheroe says buying v renting is too close to call, but he’s only made a living out of financial advice, so what would he know? Anyway, apparently we’re all agreed; mortgages are the new black.

I really like the place I live at the moment, and I could buy it, if I wanted to. I call it the Bessel Vessel, which is a name as a vision statement, because I want it to overflow with good things. It has a north facing window – which I love - that looks out over flowering plums, and two bedrooms, and a bathroom with space for a washing machine. I love that there is always something going on in my complex; sitting in my apartment feels like sitting in your dorm room on a church camp – you just have to open the door to see something interesting. I love that there is a bus stop right outside my door with a bus that runs every half hour – even on Sundays – that can get me into the city in 12 minutes. I don’t love that my since my neighbour broke up with her boyfriend, she’s taken to drunkenly stumbling past my bedroom window at 4am most Saturday and Sundays. But given what I used to hear of their fights, his suffering was greater than mine.

I went looking for alternatives, and found a place which I’ve presumptively named Casa Kansas (as in, we’re not in…). It’s near a station on the new Southern Suburbs Rail Line, way down south – 35 minutes from the city at midnight on a public holiday. It’s a 2 bedroom brick and tile, probably 40 years old. It has hideous carpet and a terrifying kitchen, and the roof maybe sags on one corner, but there’s LAND. Hundreds of square metres – 728 of them, to be precise. I could see myself staking them out and counting each square metre off, just to wallow in the abundance. There’s space to plant trees, and space to build a shed, and those spaces aren’t the same space – I could do both! I’d love a shed. If I decided to hire a bobcat just so I could dig holes, I could do that, too. Digging holes would be almost as cool as a shed. I could have heaps of people over, and we could play music really loud, and I wouldn’t have to worry about waking up the crazy lady who lives underneath me – because there wouldn’t BE anyone underneath me!

Pastor T was talking about Lot, nephew of Abraham, on Sunday. (Oh, hey, this is off topic, but: imagine a pretty standard Sunday night CofC 'youf' service. Now go read the passage we were working from, Genesis 19:30-38. As observed, there was no flannelgraph version of that incident in Sunday School, but I pity the fool who would think it beyond the capacity of a Good Preacher to deal with the material. So, snaps to you Pastor T. Your GP status is ever more solidly established. Love your work.). Anyway, the connection was made between Lot’s enculturation into Sodom and his eventual (icky) downfall. I guess I shrugged – in-the-world-but-not-of-the-world, whatever, whatever, talk to me when you’ve got something I don’t know already… Which just proves that if you turn up the heat slowly, frogs like me won’t even fight.

The Bessel Vessel, and the wider triangle (work-church-uni) I live in is frankly well off, and I’m not talking about a naff ‘compared to the Third World’ kind of assessment. People are healthy – they have clear skin and good teeth and glossy hair. They make eye contact with strangers. Waitresses mostly smile back if you smile at them, and lots of them can calculate your change in their head. The roads are good, people spend money on their gardens, coffee shops litter the landscape.

In the shopping centre nearest Casa Kansas, every third store sells $2 tchotckes of doubtful provenance. There is a thriving pawnbroker but no franchised cafes. A Code of Conduct sits where my local shopping centre advertises wedding registries. The best maintained store in the place sells alcohol; the second best hires videos. There are kids everywhere, and not in decorous singles or pairs. They come in raucous multiples, four or five at a time, all sharing in the same genetic fortunes or misfortunes. Once school is out for the day, teens cluster like drifts of shed leaves over the carpark; I guess the local Maccas can’t employ them all.

I’d forgotten how nice my life is. I could call it privileged or blessed or fortunate, but they’re all comparatives, and the point is that I often don’t compare. I just mindlessly luxuriate in the deep pleasantness of the place and the way I live.

So do I buy in Pleasantville? I’d like to. My friends are here, it’s near uni, there are almost unlimited ways of distracting myself close at hand. I have a great church overflowing with talented, committed people, who use language like I do and have similar experiences of education and work. And I have 9CC, which is, well, my beloved 9CC.

Oz has its attractions too. A real house on real land is never going to be a possibility for me near the city. There are less places to go, so I might pay more attention to the place I am. I could be part of a small church, like the churches I grew up in. But the commute between Casa Kansas and work is likely to be an hour or more, and that’s the real prickle in the sock. In a world where discretionary time is more valuable than discretionary income, why would I voluntarily give up a sixth of my waking day?

And here’s where things get really pointy; what if God were to ask me to spend 10 hours a week on buses and trains and move somewhere my friends would never visit and go to a church full of people who aren’t like me? What if that’s the plan?