The price of your soul
How much does your soul cost? Let’s assume, for a minute, that I believe I have a soul. I do believe in consciousness, at least, something that makes us human and alive. And when we die, it goes away.
But that’s not the real point of this entry.
How much should your soul be worth? There are plenty of stories about deals with the devil. Is it worth fame? Fortune? Moving to California?
Heather and I found out what our souls were worth yesterday.
Our lease is going to be up in a couple of months; got a letter from the complex urging us to resign, or pay $50 extra month to month. That sounds a bit excessive; I think Heather paid $20 or $25 month to month in South Bend.
There really isn’t enough room in this apartment for two adult people who have years and years of junk.
I realize that some people stick entire families into two-bedroom apartments. There’s lots of little kid toys to account for.
Well, we’re adults and we still have toys. And in my case, lots and lots of books.
Our stuff is crammed in here. Take into account the presence of the shopping cart guy and the kids upstairs, who like to drop things from their balcony onto our patio… and you have a need to move.
We decided we wanted to live closer to the mountains if possible. That means living either in the east or northeast part of town. Which is where all the nicer housing is.
But the nicer, newer housing doesn’t seem to have any soul. It’s new, sterile and smells like people with money.
I’ve railed against soulless places for years. We’re still talking about moving to the hip part of town, and trying to rent a house there.
But we really, really want to see the mountains. Which you can’t see most of the time anyway. The smog often obscures them, and I’m told that during the summer, we’ll be lucky to see them at all.
So the question is: how much would it take to sell our souls?
We found the answer yesterday, in the first place we walked into. A gated community of townhouses and villas. … Even though neither one of us felt good about going in there, once we came out, we were giddy and excited.
We could sell our souls to live here. Look at how nice it is. The model smells of new construction. It has a window seat. A garage. A big livingroom with a gas fireplace. An upstairs! One and a half baths.
The convenience of living in a house without having to mow the lawn.
It’s also sterile. But we like it.
So what’s the price of a soul?
$995 a month, plus $10 pet rent and an obscene pet desosit that I don’t want to talk about.
Ever since, we’ve been trying to find other places which are like that, but maybe have lower pet deposit. And constantly revising the price of our souls. Maybe it’s that neither one of us have lived somewhere so nice, and sharing the rent would help.
There are some downfalls to that particular place, in addition to its location in town. No pool. Some places that cost that much also have a fitness facility. But the biggest thing is no pool, though we have yet to use the one at our current complex, it still being too cold.
We’ll see what souls are going for these days. And I’ll let you know what it comes out to.
It seems the going price of souls is about $100 more a month. Found a place we liked better.
I hate shopping around for places to live…but for some reason, I haven’t minded much.
My mind got a little numb yesterday, but a decision may be in the offing.
The place that’s in the running has a pool, sauna, fitness room. Two patio doors. More character. Not as new, not as shiny… But a lesser pet deposit.
I like your second place better. And the price of your soul is whatever makes your soul happy!
We keep having misgivings. Mostly because of the end of town. That, and my dad (sorry dad) doesn’t think that I should move so soon. But no more shopping cart guy. Money’s going to be tight for the next couple of months to do this, but after that, it should be fine.
Talked to one of the managers of the current complex yesterday, to give him a heads up, though we haven’t given official notice yet.
He wanted to know why we’re moving. We’ve got a 2 bedroom 2 bath available, he says.
It’s not really about the bathrooms, though it will be nice. I, at least, have shared one bathroom with others for all of my life.
It’s about space. I don’t think the current complex could offer us much more space, even if there was a second bathroom. That, and the shopping cart guy…. well, he wouldn’t live next to me anymore, I suppose. The upside to that would’ve been that we wouldn’t have to rent a truck. But that’s the only upside.
Another misgiving, I suppose, is that the original destination was the hip part of town. But unless we rent a house, I don’t see getting enough space to make it worthwhile. There are a lot of apartment buildings in that end of town, but they’re older, and don’t look like they’d have tons of space.
That, and there’s always the foothills and mountains on the northeast side of town. When they can be seen at all.
I think another big plus of the complex we’re considering is there are no gates.
Somehow, gates can be disturbing. For instance, at our apartment, we see people circumvent the gates all the time, in a part of town where you’d actually like to see them keep people out.
But seeing gates in the nice part of town really said we want poor people to stay out. We want people who don’t belong on this part of town to stay out.
The complex we’re considering is probably too old for gates, and isn’t laid out like that, anyway. It’s more like a bank of buildings set across a couple of different streets. I don’t think there’d be a good way to gate it.
And the new place, if we end up there, is tucked away on tree-lined streets, which right now are in full bloom. And smell fantastic, which is an improvement over the putrid stench of the shopping cart, and of pollution in general. Further, you can run (or in my case, wheeze) on those streets; you can’t run here.
Bad thing: It’s in a part of town named “Dominion.” Marked on a long, concrete, impressive-looking slab. Behind various Mercedes and Lexus SUVs that speed past with their designer-clothing-clad occupants. Yeah.