The Apocalypse, Books and Selling my House

I have stripped my house of so much stuff over the past year it looks naked. And I can’t believe I’m about to say that I kind of like the look. My library, though, still has eleven feet of totally empty bookshelves in it and my crafting and guest room just has an area rug, a small keyhole desk and two running board picnic baskets (circa 1910), one sitting on top of the other. Both of these rooms are actually bedrooms so the openness should help buyers visualize them that way. The open shelves in my guest bathroom that once housed a large collection of seashells now has neatly folded towels and covered baskets. The living room without the roll top desk, without eight pieces of art including three sculptures and without my husband’s collection of vintage western memorabilia it looks a lot less Old West. But because I still have six large prints on the walls---three of contemporary Native Americans and three of contemporary cowboys---the living and dinning rooms now look more New American West. A staging company would take them all down and put up a nondescript cityscape or an over-sized sunburst made of gold gilded plastic. I’m sorry, but if people are so dumb that they can’t look past my artwork to see their own stuff on the walls, then they’re too dumb to live here. (And yes, a staging company who gave me a quote last year raved about what the sunburst could do for my room, a sunburst I've seen a dozen times on HGTV and I disliked that lady from the minute she stepping into my house.)

In my dinning room, though, I still have all my keeper books that tells a story of who lives here---a no-no according to staging companies. Screw the staging companies! It’s a seller’s market. Besides, it’s not like I have a collection of military manuals for Navy SEALS or Delta Forces on Fifty Ways to Kill a Person or books on how to dissect and dispose of bodies from Psycho Press. No prepper books on how to live through an apocalypse either. Although I just finished reading a series of seven books by Kyla Stone that has me thinking I need a few. 

Ohmygod, those books were the perfect thing to keep me distracted from obsessing about my own life. The series is based on the premise that a high altitude nuclear bomb detonation caused an electromagnetic pulse that destroyed all the power grids and fried anything with computer chips in them---cars, planes, communications, media  and medical devices; sewer, power and water treatment plants, gas station and food distribution hubs. Even modern generators. All of it rendered useless across America and beyond.

 I’ve read a few dystrophy books in the past year but these books were set in my home state, all over the state, and featured a nasty-ass militia group not unlike our real-life militia group that tried to kidnap our governor because the candy-asses didn't want to wear masks during the pandemic. The books were action packed and full of villains and good guys and instructions for how to do things like build a solar powered oven, make hand-warmers and convert a mop pail and a swimming pool noodle into a toilet.

Threaded through the first five books a girl who’d been held in a basement prison for five years by a psychopath escaped when the power grid went out. It was in the dead of winter in the middle of the national forest and she was eight months pregnant. Yup, the psychopath was tracking her when her path crossed with an x-Delta Force guy armed to the teeth who was trying to get to his cabin in the middle of no where to ride out the chaos. It was just a little light, bedtime reading that made me forget to worry about how much my life is about to chance.

It’s a good thing so much of my reading fare is on my Kindle because I do wonder what kind of impression I’d make if someone were to see the titles of the books I’ve been reading since the pandemic started. Looking at my shelves of "real" books sitting in plain sight of the herd of Lookie-Loos who will invade my house in a few days, I’ve combed over the titles for anything that might turn off a perspective buyers. The staging companies turn all your titles to the back so no on can read them. Joanna Gaines on HGTV does that too when she does a remodel reveal. Drives me crazy. If the home owner doesn’t read, don’t use books for props, Joanna! I only turned one title to the wall, a book about back alley abortions that was written before Roe vs Wade and helped push the issue up to the Supreme Court.

It crossed my mind to dust that book with baby powder like I used to do with my diary when I was a teenager so I could tell if my brother touched it. The joke was on me because my brother was smart enough to know where my mom kept the baby powder. But a snoopy person wondering what I’m hiding with the title not showing probably wouldn’t notice that my Nancy Drew detective trick was in play. Just to be clear, I’m kidding. I’m not going to set up a trap. If a Right-to-Lifer finds that book she/he will steal it to destroy it like they do with pro-choice library books in my part of the county. That's the reason why I didn't donate to the library with my other women's history books. 

 Over the years my husband and I had looked at a dozen or two houses for sale and only once did a person’s art and reading influenced us enough to seriously consider putting in an offer. The guy was elderly and had drawn and written over every square inch of his walls in the style of William Blake. Mythical little creatures and poetry, so mind-blowingly strange and beautiful we wouldn’t have wanted to paint over it or to live with. We thought about cutting the walls out and selling sections as art. We researched him, hoping he was famous enough that his "walls" could end up paying for the mortgage. No such luck. His walls were also not sheet rock but rather the old style plaster lath and they would have fallen apart if you tried to preserve sections of it.

Over the years we’d often wondered what happened to the art inside. I used to tell my husband that when I got to be his age I was going to throw convention to the winds and do the same thing with my walls. He’d scowl at me, trying to gauge if I was serious. I never told him that if I had half the talent that old guy had I would have done it in heart beat and not wait until I'm the age I am now, but I’m not so the walls in my new place are safe. ©

 "Enlightenment means taking full responsibility for your life." 

William Blake 

 

William Blake, an artist and poet who was often labeled insane, genius and prophet all rolled into one.