Living Near

The owner of the house I would like to buy is an engineer.   I’m a designer who keeps being called an architect.  Architects see the world differently than engineers.  Architects see curved lines that connect only in one’s imagination.  Engineers, seeing the same thing, want to straighten the curves and connect them to reality.

Last Wednesday was going to be the big day.  We were going to, hopefully, finalize and sign the purchase agreement.  We have essentially spent the last week going back and forth between curved lines and straight lines and whether or not they should be connected to reality visually or simply in one’s mind.

I spent time in the morning going over the agreement.  I wanted to go into this meeting with it fresh in my mind.   I knew the owner was going to propose some changes.   He had said on the phone we needed a blank copy.  I asked why.  He said his was too marked up to use.  Egads.

Well, going over the purchase agreement took longer than planned.  Legal mumpo jumpo.  Before I could leave he called.  I did not answer.  He left a message saying he’s been sitting looking out his window for 20 minutes.   Bad way to start a meeting.

We couldn’t sit at the dining room table because he has it full of stacks of papers related to the selling of his house.  I’m wondering why I only have one stack.

We sit down in the living room.   I sit down on the sofa that one falls into.  The view out the windows is of the park and the white pines.

We start where he wants to start – not at the beginning.  It’s a rather slow, ardeous, process.  A half hour goes by.  We have finished one line.   Over four hours later, we finally finish.

I head down to my real estate agent’s office to have the agreed-to wording put into a final document.  The real estate agents’ roles in this are a story in themselves.   Maybe later.

I’m comfortable with the agreement the owner and I have worked out with the exception of one thing – how it is determined the monies in escrow are released.  My agent agrees with my concern.  I call a real estate attorney.  She also agrees.

Now this may not seem a big thing, but it is the one thing the owner says he will not compromise on.  Instead of heading back to the house, I head home.  From there I call the owner and tell him I can’t sign it as he insists it must be.  I spend a couple hours on the internet researching more.  It all warns against doing what he insists on doing.

It’s now Thursday.  The owner and I have a long phone conversation in the morning.   We talk again in the evening.  We’re hung up.  We reach a point where there’s nothing more to say.  We say goodbye.

This walk we had been on has had its bumps and rough spots.  We had, however, gotten around and over them.  Now it seemed we had hit the wall – too high to get over, too wide to get around.

A walk that ends at a wall seems purposeless.  God says not.

My nose hurts.

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