The Brilliant Natasha Wimmer in the Granta Sex issue on translating Bolaño.

All those other weeds, I delight in and eat, but I can’t warm up to the fiendish Japanese Knotweed.

“The first look at 178 different microbes that live in or on the human body shows that more than 90 percent of their genetic sequences were unknown and raise questions about how scientists classify species among micro-organisms.” Wow. The Human Microbiome Project.

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In the shady playground across the street the other mothers, who are mostly from Mexico, call me Señora when we chat; so I do the same, but it feels very formal, anachronistic in a way that heightens the feeling of alienation I always get from playgrounds. It makes me feel like the platinum blond, high heeled mother in the Dick and Jane books I learned to read by, calling the other mothers Mrs. Soandso, until we’ve had cocktails together.

I like talking to other women in the playground though because it distracts me from that dead feeling that sometimes overwhelms me for moments at a time there.⁰¹ The playground is so separated from the rest of life, so powerfully removed from adulthood and all the threads that twine back into the fabric of culture and influence. It’s a nothing place for nobodies. It blanks the voices of its inhabitants. It’s the only place I ever feel like I’m babysitting again.

I am the oldest of eight. I babysat a lot when I was a teenager, and worked at a preschool in college. Even though I genuinely loved some of my little babysittees (and genuinely loathed others, something I recall with alarm when I watch Aure throw a fit for his sitter), the sensation of pure drudgery and isolation was forceful enough to make me rethink my assumptions about what my adult life might look like. For a long time I thought I never wanted a child. Then, of course, I got old enough to realize that another person’s childhood is a very short time, one small adventure. But there’s something about the remoteness of the playground that makes me feel numb and lost again.

I have a standing childcare problem on Fridays and one day recently when I couldn’t manage to cobble anything together, I took Aure to the movies to see Babies. (Beautifully shot, poorly edited. The first movie I have seen since he was born.) He enjoyed it very much and we have reenacted various scenes together again and again. The Namibian babies were the heroes of the film because they carried things on their heads and wore the least clothing. The Namibian mothers also seemed to have the least distance between their work and their mother-ness. The babies and children participated in the work the women did and cared for one another. The baby’s mother was rarely depicted alone. The Mongolian mother’s work was also evident. She had to corral and milk various beasts and stomp around with tall boots on all day long. She was very much alone though, so the baby spent a good amount of time quietly tied to the bed post or harassed by his brother. When he got a bit older, he hung out pantless with the livestock with more obvious enjoyment. The mother’s interactions with the baby were both loving and frustrated. There was no hint as to what the Japanese and American parents did for a living or who there were aside from parents. It’s manifestly impossible to combine office work and childcare, so the only shots of the parents showed them unconnected to anything except the weird ghetto of baby food and sing-along songs.

A friend, the mother of a toddler, once said in an exhausted rage, Fuck the idea of a community of mothers, I just want to be part of a community.

Fellas, I’m drowning in things to do, but I can’t stop thinking about this article in the Atlantic by Richard Florida , called America Needs to Get Over Its House Passion, which I guess is a quote from Edmund Phelps or something. The more I think, the less sense it makes. It has been passed around and m’hm-ed all over the place with a lot of agreement, but something’s wrong. I wish I had time to take it apart slowly to see if it makes sense, but off the top off my head, I find myself wanting to defend the idea of home ownership. Florida points out that the rate of return on residential real estate is negligible after inflation. Sounds true enough; especially for home ownership as opposed to real estate investment. But that refers to resale value. I imagine that many or most Americans see home ownership as a different kind of investment; a lifestyle or a degree of security to aspire to, rather than a speculation. Assuming you manage to pay off a thirty year mortgage, you have a home at the end of it. Real estate. Shelter. Granted, it still costs money to own, but it’s very hard for anyone to take it away from you at that point.

In those cities, like Austin, in which rent is still a good bit cheaper than a mortgage, I suppose the assumption is that people ought to be investing the difference. The catch is where? The country is full of people who saved for retirement in nice, safe mutual funds and now have nothing to show for it. I also think some of the correlations go the opposite direction than those implied in the article. The same people who buy houses in blue collar towns are unlikely to bound out of their seats to go work in technology at the drop of a hat. I bet the reason home ownership is more common in places with lower incomes, wages, and economic output, is because life is more precarious, so the home as shelter is more important. People who are less educated are more vulnerable to changes in the larger economy. A person without a college education or professional experience can’t just run out and “innovate” if she gets fired. That kind of entitlement to be critical of the world around you and to imagine your ideas are worth something is all tied up with class.

And come on, home ownership is lower in areas with higher concentrations of the tech industry because higher concentrations of the tech industry cluster around educational institutions. The universities alone would make those areas more economically resilient. Also, transience in the tech industry is as age-related as is it is in students. Most of us burnt out on that life sometime in our thirties, and would sacrifice a lot to stay in one place and have a garden.

I’d also like to see that survey of homeowner vs renter happiness in an age bracket in which the homeowners are likely to have paid off their mortgages. (Or does that happen? Do people more often take out a second mortgage to put a kid through school or something?) There’s a lot of interesting data here, but I’m still not sure where the argument against home ownership comes from. What’s the alternative?

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Kelly Dobson, lots of interesting stuff on the connections between people and machines.

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Not much posting here because of all the aforementioned Things To Do, about which I will hopefully be able to post in six or eight weeks. Let me say though, that Mother’s Day commenced with flowers and maple candy, continued with Aure eating far more than his share of the candy, lying on the floor, bicycling his feet and shouting, Lemme go! Lemme go up to the ceiling! Next, a walk and a brunch determined by Aure, consisting of tacos of all the best parts (I can barely restrain myself from adding TM to the end of that, after following @wise_kaplan on Twitter for so long.) nopal, and orange juice. Finally, fewer hours of work than I have done in about ten days. A very fine day. Thanks Large and Small.