August 2, 2021:
The house is dark. The walls are brown, there are no skylights, 200' pines tower overhead. It's necessary to turn on artificial lights in early afternoon. Position of the sun in summertime makes no difference.
The walls are narrow, and slanted. It's an A-frame design, wider at the foundation, slanting inward to the roof. It feels cramped, so that, combined with the darkness it's like a cellar above ground.
Nearby trails are happy, but they cross the property in two locations, so that voices, especially on summer weekends, announce themselves randomly in the back yard. From time to time a group with wandering attentions turn up in the driveway, thinking it's the trail. It's not.
All weekend every weekend engines roar on Skyline. Silicon Bros in the sports cars their options bought them, plus motorcyclists by the tens of dozens. As the crow flies they're about a quarter mile from my house, and while we can't see each other through the trees, I can certainly hear them.
The heat is miserable. There is no cross-breeze and, in summer afternoons, no breezes at all. The two wall-mounted air conditioners are both broken, and the property manager demonstrates no inclination to repair them. It can be as hot as 110 inside, while with fires raging in Oregon and Northern CA the doors and windows must remain shut.
I did not choose this house. It was what there was. Nor the last one, nor the one before that. Perhaps if I manage to avoid living under bridges I'll one day buy one of my own. I hate that idea — absolutely detest it. That was my mother's fantasy, never mine. But the consequences of serial rentership are becoming too problematic to ignore.