Unguided road trip

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Facts and Dreams The employee returning home in the evenings has to take care, lest he park his car in front of the neighbor’s garage. What if he, laptop case in hand, jacket slung over one arm, walks through the wrong door ?

He hangs up his jacket on a hook in the corridor and puts down the bag. Then, still utterly clueless, he collapses onto the living-room couch, exhales deeply, what a day ! Even the couch is so similar to his own “next door” that he only startles when a woman walks into the room: She’s not blonde — he’s sitting in someone else’s life.

Roland Iselin has photographed a street in an Ameri­ can suburb. It ascends almost impercetibly, everything is so quiet and clean. The residential zone is recrea­ tional zone is peripheral zone : One can find similar models anywhere in the world. Suburban complacency.

A view of the so-and-so mountains, close to the so-andso river, its banks a great place to walk the dog. And the dead-straight so-and-so road leading to the city center is lined by two supermarkets, several gas stations, a doctor, and a realtor on “Main Street.” And can you imagine … ! Where there was nothing but shrubs and a large billboard on stilts not too long ago, now gardens bloom, the neighborhood watch is fully set up, the skies are blue.

Why did the neighbor dream up the same house ?

Why did he choose the same colors, the same bricks, shrubs, why that same red gravel ? Schematic clarity, already in the street grid. Autonomously, indepen­ dently, of their own accord, they all chose exactly this : the feasible, the neutral. And yet, you never know what’s hiding behind these facades.

Real estate, according to the fictive realtor Frank Bascombe in Richard Ford’s Independence Day, is not about finding your dream home, it’s about getting rid of it. The process of mistakes and corrections is what keeps the economy going. So we get up in the morning, down our coffee, get into our car and head to our office. Like everyone else. In the evening we walk through the wrong door. Maybe we don’t even notice.

Maybe our one true love is waiting behind it.

136

Facts and Dreams The employee returning home in the evenings has to take care, lest he park his car in front of the neighbor’s garage. What if he, laptop case in hand, jacket slung over one arm, walks through the wrong door ?

He hangs up his jacket on a hook in the corridor and puts down the bag. Then, still utterly clueless, he collapses onto the living-room couch, exhales deeply, what a day ! Even the couch is so similar to his own “next door” that he only startles when a woman walks into the room: She’s not blonde — he’s sitting in someone else’s life.

Roland Iselin has photographed a street in an Ameri­ can suburb. It ascends almost impercetibly, everything is so quiet and clean. The residential zone is recrea­ tional zone is peripheral zone : One can find similar models anywhere in the world. Suburban complacency.

A view of the so-and-so mountains, close to the so-andso river, its banks a great place to walk the dog. And the dead-straight so-and-so road leading to the city center is lined by two supermarkets, several gas stations, a doctor, and a realtor on “Main Street.” And can you imagine … ! Where there was nothing but shrubs and a large billboard on stilts not too long ago, now gardens bloom, the neighborhood watch is fully set up, the skies are blue.

Why did the neighbor dream up the same house ?

Why did he choose the same colors, the same bricks, shrubs, why that same red gravel ? Schematic clarity, already in the street grid. Autonomously, indepen­ dently, of their own accord, they all chose exactly this : the feasible, the neutral. And yet, you never know what’s hiding behind these facades.

Real estate, according to the fictive realtor Frank Bascombe in Richard Ford’s Independence Day, is not about finding your dream home, it’s about getting rid of it. The process of mistakes and corrections is what keeps the economy going. So we get up in the morning, down our coffee, get into our car and head to our office. Like everyone else. In the evening we walk through the wrong door. Maybe we don’t even notice.

Maybe our one true love is waiting behind it.

136