“My Job is to watch dreams die”

I work at a real estate office. We primarily sell houses that were foreclosed on by lenders. We aren’t involved in the actual foreclosures or evictions - anonymous lawyers in the cloud somewhere is tasked with the paperwork - we are the boots on the ground that interacts with the actual walls, roofs and occasional bomb threat.

When the lender forecloses - or is thinking of foreclosing - on a property one of the first things that happens is they send somebody out to see if there is actually a house there and if there is anybody living there who needs to be evicted. Lawyers are expensive so they send a real estate agent or a property preservation company out to check. There is the occasional discovery of fraud where there was never a house on the parcel to begin with, but such instances are rare. Sometimes this initial visit results in discovering a house that has burned down or demolished, is abandoned or occupied by somebody who has absolutely no connection with the homeowner. Sometimes the houses are discovered to be crack dens or meth labs, sometimes the sites of cock or dog fighting operations, or you might even find a back yard filled with a pot cultivation that can’t be traced back to anybody because it was planted in yet another vacant house in a blighted neighborhood. The house could be worth less than zero - blighted to the point where you can’t even give it away (this is a literal statement, I have tried to give away many houses or even vacant lots with no takers over the years) or it could be a waterfront mansion in a gated golf community worth well over seven figures that does not include the number “one”. Sometimes they are found to have been seized by the IRS, the local tax authority, the DEA or the US Marshal. Variety is the rule. The end results are the law.

If the house is occupied my job is to make contact and determine who they are: there are laws that establish what happens to a borrower as opposed to a tenant and the servicemember relief act adds an additional set of questions that must be answered. Some of the people have an idea of why I am there. Some claim they never knew they were foreclosed on, or tell me that they have worked something out with their lender, some won’t tell me a thing and some threaten me to never return in the name of the police, their lawyer, or the occasional “or else/if I were you”. During one initial visit the sight of 50-60 motorcycles parked on the lawn suggested that we try again the next day. At a couple the police had cordoned off the area and at one they were in the process of dredging the lake searching for the body of a depressed former homeowner.

If nobody is home I have to determine if they are at work, on vacation, in the army, wintering/summering at their other home, in jail, in a nursing home, dead or if they moved away. It isn’t easy. Utilities can be left on for months. Neighbors can be staging the yard and house to appear occupied to prevent blight in their neighborhood. By the same token people will stop cutting the lawn for months, let trash and old phone books pile up on their porch, lose gas and electric service and continue to live in properties that have not only physically unsafe to approach but are so filthy that when it comes time to clean them out the crews have to wear hazmat suits. One house had a gallon pickle jar filled with dead roaches on the porch. Somebody lived in that house and thought that was a logical thing to do. People like me are tasked with first contact.

Evictions are expensive and time-consuming. Ultimately once the process gets that far there isn’t much that can be done to prevent it. You didn’t pay your mortgage, the lender gets the house back. There are an infinite number of reasons why the mortgage couldn’t be paid, some are more sympathetic than others, but in the end you will be leaving the property willingly or not. The lawyers handle the evictions - they churn through the paperwork in the background, ten thousand properties at a time. They have it down to rote function based on templates, personal experience with the various judges and intimate knowledge of the federal, state and municipal laws, along with dealing with the occasional sheriff who refuses to evict somebody, the informal policies established by the local judges and a myriad of other problems that can arise. As a business decision many lenders have determined that it is cheaper to settle with the occupants - instead of going through the formal eviction they will offer cash. In exchange for surrendering a property in reasonably clean condition with the furnace still hooked up, the kitchen not stripped and the basement not intentionally flooded the lender will cut the occupants a check. It costs much less than an eviction, provides reasonable hope that the plumbing won’t freeze and can take a fraction of the time to obtain possession. This is where the personal element becomes real.

Some people jump at the chance. They don’t want to live here anymore. They may be getting married and moving in but couldn’t sell the unneeded house. They have a new job across the country, they’re moving to the other side of the planet. They were renting and found a better place in a neighborhood where the thieves don’t grin at them through the kitchen window while they disconnect a running air conditioner knowing that the average response time for the police is measured in weeks for a call like that. The cash is a down payment, a security deposit (since their landlord never returns theirs), or maybe a moving van. These are the best cases. Sometimes they are happy to hear from me. Other times, not so much.

When I make first contact and explain that the lender is offering them money to leave sometimes they tell me that they haven’t slept for months, knowing that something was going to happen but never knowing if tomorrow was the day when somebody kicked in their door and threw their kids out on the lawn. Their lenders won’t tell them anything, they have nothing to go on but horror stories from other people that they never knew. It never occurred to them that they should call an attorney and ask what was going on. I can be the first people to discuss their situation who isn’t a debt collector: you can hear the release of a massive weight in their voice. It isn’t much, but at least it is something.

Or they can get angry and defensive, tell me that they were never foreclosed on, tell me that I am trespassing and owe them $5,000 in “land use fees” for “using” their property as I walk to the front door. They threaten to sue, they threaten to call the cops, they say I should look under my car before I start it from now on. They send letters written in various forms of English - one time scribed in crayon - detailing their rights and how I am violating some maritime treaty from the 1700s. In my travels I have learned that if you copyright your name you can’t be named in any kind of legal action, if you never write down your ZIP code then you aren’t a resident of the United States and that if I tell somebody that their lender is offering them money to vacate while leaving the staircase (yes, these get stolen) and driveway (yes, these get stolen) in place then I am guilty of slave trading under some United Nations something or other.

For those who reject the deal, nothing changes. They don’t lose any rights and it isn’t counted against them in any way - neither the lawyers nor the courts care because the lenders don’t have to offer anything - the eviction process continues. I listen to the stories why they can’t/won’t take the deal. They can’t afford anything else. They don’t have anywhere else to go. They want to make the eviction as expensive as possible. They’re going to get “a big settlement” from some vague lawsuit any day now. They want their kids to finish out the school year. They intend to take the furnace as soon as they find a new house. All kinds of reasons. Some are heartbreaking, others not so much.

For those who do take the deal, at the appointed date and time I meet them at their former home. I walk the yard and enter every room. I open every drawer and cupboard making sure the house is clean and doesn’t have old engines, toxic chemicals or dead dogs lingering anywhere. Sometimes the kids are there, maybe waiting in the car, maybe not. I see the marks on the wall showing how the kids grew over the years. I see the anguished poetry scribbled on the wall by stoned teenagers and the occasional hole punched in the wall. One woman handed me the key to her reinforced bedroom door - during the divorce her now ex-husband was still living in the house and she had to barricade herself in at night. Another said “right there is where I found my son - he couldn’t handle losing the house”.

Sometimes they don’t want the money and don’t want to be evicted so they sign a waiver stating that everything left inside can be disposed of. Hospital beds. Oxygen tanks and wheelchairs. Hundreds of boxes of shoes. A mannequin. A 2nd grader’s homework portfolio. A wedding album filled with pictures with one person torn out. Get rich quick “business plans”. 40 years worth of drafting documents. To the lenders and the lawyers, these things don’t exist - they close the file and order a trashout. Sometimes I linger as I check the basement for mold and lead. I am the final period on so many significant chapters. To most other people it is just part of the job but in so many other universes this is where I ended up. There is no difference between myself and these people other than the intangible twists of experience.

And so I listen. I feign dispassion but I’m not fooling anybody. Somehow they can tell that I care and thank me even as they admit that it isn’t my fault, that it isn’t my responsibility to listen. I’ve stood inside another’s dream for an hour as they spoke, not really to be heard but to say goodbye - to leave the ghosts behind.

They go to the car and return with the openers.

The keys are peeled from a ring.

They thank me. Sometimes they cry.

And they’re gone.

I wait for their car to vanish before I put up the sign. To most everybody else it is just another house on just another block in just another city in just another financial catastrophe.

But I was there. I saw the dream end.

But at least I don’t make them turn out the lights one last time as they leave.

That’s my job.

The Butterfly Effect

The butterfly effect states that the smallest movement, the smallest flap of a butterfly’s wings over the amazon could cause the death of a small boy living halfway around the world. This can be applied to a vast number of things. When we relate it to the current social climate of the Middle East and Northern Africa we see the smallest choice made by Mohammed Bouazizi, to wake up that morning an sell his wares in his local market. Without this choice being made we would have never seen the massive uprisings we have on our hands today. When Mr. Bouazizi set up shop in that market his was approached by the authorities and asked to show his permits to sell there. When he failed to present them his cart was confiscated. He then turned to the most ancient for of protest, he lit himself afire. 

This lead to the current situation in the Middle East and Northern Africa is a direct result of the simple action Mr. Bouazizi made that day. He in essence started the entirely of the revolution. We have seen the effects in Egypt, we are seeing the effects now in Libya and Syria. This movement will be spreading around the world. Up to this point, Mubarak has been ousted the military has taken his place. In Libya the civil war rages on with the support of 110 US Tomahawk missiles and a NATO enforced no-fly-zone. The government of Syria is trying to maintain the power they currently have with a massive uprising on their hands. This movement as a whole will have drastic effects on what happens in the continent and the rest of the world. 

The lasting effects of this movement will be felt and have already been felt though out the middle east, Oppressive quasi-milaristic have taken heed to the events and have come to the conclusion that the people have the power. They have been inspired by the events that occurred in Egypt and Tunisia. We are witnessing a massive shift in power though out the middle east, for the first time in quite a while the people actually have the upper hand, they actually have the power. The main reason for this is the fact that the people are unified, they are able to stand up to the high caliber rounds and tanks because they are in fact together a single cohesive unit with a common goal. This is absolutely essential to their movement, yet when feelings are so high, people tend to get caught up in the movement and forget what it is they are truly fighting for, this could lead the revolution movement astray. 

When analyzing these past events its necessary to look at the impact of Social Media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. They without a doubt play a huge role in the movement as a whole. Without these sites, people would be unorganized, they would not be able to get their message out. These sites make it easy for people to express their viewpoints on an issue and come together and unite with people of like goals and interests. Within seconds you can create a group and start discussions about any topic of your preference. When looking at how this effects what is occurring today we come to the conclusion that without social media these revolts might not have even occurred. 

When we look back to the choice of Mr. Bouazizi to set himself on fire we can see how this had a huge effect on what is occurring though out the world today. We can see how one small action has some of the largest consequences, how one man can start a movement that could change the world. 

Accidents

By definition an accident is something that goes wrong, due to no human desire for it to occur. Yet for an accident to occur something most go wrong, there must be some fault along the line. Maybe a loose bolt here, or a disconnected cable there. These are all results of a lack of action, on someones behalf. Accidents are therefore caused by a humans lack of action. The inability to maintain machines or infrastructure, is the root cause of the vast majority of accidents.

One might say that and accident is in fact an unfortunate series of events, without any or very little human input, yet how can things truly occur without human impact or without an object that we constructed. We see this in natural disasters, were thousands of family’s are displaced. Yet If we had taken precautionary measures we would have been able to counteract what ever forces of nature that befall us, In the end we most conclude that accidents are cause by a lack of action on humanity’s behalf.  What do you think?

Death

Before we die, we want to see all of our goals, our ambitions realized. We all want to accomplish things that we were unable to, that we failed at in some aspect. Yet at the point of realization we are to late, as if god wants to play is last card, his last prank. We don’t understand death, we have absolutely no idea what occurs after death, what happens to our bodies or our core essence. I recently read a teenagers thoughts before receiving open heart surgery the next day: 

Anyways, I’m 16. I was born with a heart defect that my old doctor in Brazil thought I would grow out of. After getting a MRI, my cardiologist (in California’s east bay) confirmed that I would need open heart surgery to fix it. Basically, they are unroofing my right coronary artery because my left ons comes off of it. (that’s the defect). I probably confused which one comes off the other, but you get the idea. I can’t play tennis right now because if the bad artery pumps too hard and hits my pulmonary artery, my bad artery will collapse and my heart won’t cool down, ergo I suddenly die. The MRI shows that the bad artery runs along the heart for like a cm, so unroofing it to give it more flow would fix it. If the MRI is wrong, which they said there’s a 1/3 chance it is, they will need to surgically move the misplaced artery and put it in its right spot. Pretty rare surgery apparently. Maybe 3 cases a year at my hospital. 6 months recovery, 5 days in hospital.

Am I scared? Kinda. Ive done the pre-op and the surgery is tmrw. The surgeon is cool and I think German or Austrian with 8 years experience after med school/clinic. My friends are gonna visit, which is nice. My mom is freaking out hysterically, which worries me. She’s made it clear that if I don’t make it, she’s gonna probably commit suicide since she’s a single mother with a shitty job and in a foreign country with few friends and only a couple sisters from Brazil around town. I’m more worried about her than myself.

When we die, or rather when we face occurrences that might result in our own death, we try to focus on others, and the repercussions of our own death. Personally, I think it would be better to come to terms with what I accomplished in my life, if I made the most of every opportunity that came my way. If I did what I wanted to do and did it damn well. Yet if I was to die tomorrow, I would have wasted my childhood. I would not be content with what I have achieved, I would honestly consider my life up to this point a waste. Most people in this world (I believe) Would come the the same conclusion, that they were unhappy, that their life could have been so much better if certain things had happened or not happened. 

Just dealing with the fact that you could die at any second (as the teen above and many others must go through every day) is an absolutely horrendous burden, the idea that there is something fatally wrong within your own body is so distressing. People who have gone through such an experience realize that life has an expiration date, and they know that you must make the best of your time before that date comes to reality. 

Thoughts

Have you ever found yourself wondering about another’s thoughts, or perhaps how those very thoughts relate to your own? How they intertwine or how they may undo themselves. Its interesting to wonder about these thoughts, and how the hold a persons very essence, their dreams, goals and passions, yet when I ask most people whats on your mind? or what are you thinking about? I get “Oh nothing” or even “nothing”. How can you possibly have nothing on your mind?!? The whole concept of nothing when you think about it is impossible on this earth, If we say nothing in the absence of something, the quite frankly it doesn’t exist, there can never be nothing, always something. Anyways, I wonder how all these thoughts and actions connect, in a human web of sorts. How one action here, and the lack of another there can have an immense effect on somebody’s actions or ideas thousands of miles away. This concept of a human web intrigues me to no end.