Urbanization and its Discontents

Tonight I did my usual commuter calculus:

2(subway) + 87% humidity + 3(busker) = the bus is a better bet

30(oz. afternoon coffee) + 5min. jog to catch the 6:42 = pee now and wait for the 7:04

So I got on the bus, which is a pretty nice bus. There's the paisley shirt lady and the trash bag guy and hipster dude and the girl who talks on her cell phone about the Atkins diet:

"no, really, I put ranch dressing on everything......on a Western omelette.......it's totally good......no, I know, it totally does sound gross, but it's not......no, it's awesome."

So I was having a reasonably happy ride home until we passed Grossman's Bargain Outlet. And I saw a sign that said: "Sheds, $398."

And I was overwhelmed with longing.

Or if not precisely overwhelmed, at least well and thoroughly whelmed.

It was an uncertain and inchoate longing, but all the more powerful because of it. It was like the crush I had on Miss Husby when I was eleven or twelve. The desire was so strong precisely because I couldn't quite imagine what it would be like to satisfy it (despite some very precise drawings my friend Billy had shown me).

I don't know where I would put a shed. My "yard" is smaller than any respectable shed.

I don't know what I would put in a shed. I'm handy enough, but I don't have any tools that don't fit neatly in my tool box.

And yet the fact remains: I want a shed.

This isn't like my more regular commodity-fetishistic longing for pants and cars and Herman's Hermits CDs.

This is existential.

Sartre warned us that modernity had left us with a God-shaped hole. He didn't tell me that city life would leave me with a shed-shaped hole.