Puccini, Paquita and Me

I sold my giant villa for 50,000 yesterday, after paying 1,000,000 for it. This would seem to be a terrible loss, if it hadn't been so easy to do online. Just a few clicks and it was gone. One moment I was singing Mimi's part in O Mimì, tu più non torni (from Puccini's La Bohème) from my shady 2nd-floor veranda as I perused my thousands of sheep (black and white and also pink and green with wobbly antennae), horses, cows, bulls (two that I constantly have to separate), goats, rabbits, pigs, chickens, turkeys, swans, ducks, sea gulls, turtle and penguin (just one of each so far)... oh, and I forgot, reindeer. And also, way too many cats.

And the next moment I realized that I just couldn't sustain this lifestyle anymore.

Besides, Mimi dies in the end. Of consumption. And Rodolfo the poet, who abandoned her because he thought she was a whore (or at least that's what he told his friends and her friends and the whole neighborhood), but actually because he knew she was dying, only came back to her out of guilt just before she died.

I'm sorry, but I must interject. I just picked the above opera and song out of the air. Just to add a little context and color for your reading enjoyment. Seriously. I just thought, hmm, I need an opera. OK, Puccini sounds good. I'll go to Wikipedia and get a name of one of his operas. But I end up, by coincidence, with another story of a heroine dieing of consumption. The first story with this very same plot put a mark on my forehead for life: My mother gave me my middle name after she watched the movie Camille in the hospital (read the original Alexandre Dumas story here and weep). Camille died of consumption. She died exactly one day before her lover, Armand, who had abandoned her because she was a whore, showed up to apologize.

Just call me Lisa Camille Mimi Wines. Oh, and Rodolpho and Armand? Fuck them.

Let's just get back to real estate, shall we?

So, I replaced my luxurious Italian villa with a small southwestern adobe bungalow for 50,000. While sweeping the prairie dust from my doorstep, dressed in my home-made coyote-skin dress (made from the exact coyote that His Governorship Rick Perry shot while jogging in Texas), I have now taken to singing Lefty Frizzell's Worried Mind to the rhythmic rat-a-tat-tat of the woodpecker who's sharpening his bug-sucking beak in the dead cactus outside my door.

You promised me love that would never die.
That promise you made, was only a lie.
Now after you've gone, all alone I pine.
For all that I've got, is a worried mind.

On certain mornings, while a southerly wind rattles my nopalitos, I can be heard singing Rata de dos patas ("Two-legged rat") by Paquita la del Barrio as I slap tortilla dough within a 16th of an inch of his its life. In between crushing hot red chilis in my bare hands, I turn to my pet pack rat and say,

"¿Me estás oyendo, inútil?" ("Are you listening to me, you good-for-nothing?")

Of course, I'm not pining, nor bitter about any one man (just all of them). Really. These were just the first two Mexi-ranchera-old-west songs I found in my iTunes. Swear.

All my animals are still around (they promise nothing, but give much), since I need the income I derive from collecting their eggs, feathers, milk, truffles and er, hair. The penguin gives me a regular supply of ice cubes, for which I am most grateful in my new desert home. Now, if I could just get a few more blankies and baby bottles, I might be able to finish building that fucking nursery barn so I can safely store all my colts. I think they're getting cold.

Sigh. I wish real estate and sustenance were as simple to gain and dispose of as they are in FarmVille. And although my male FarmVille neighbors can come and, er, fertilize my crops, they aren't allowed to stay. This, as Martha Stewart says, is a very good thing.

Last week, in "real" life, while drifting along the beach with my gal pals, drinking natural wine, eating Crêpe à l'andouillette and looking for men with fat fingers, I successfully avoided making a decision about my little adobe-style home in Arizona. But, upon my return, I had no choice but to face the music. Other than a few months with my friend Kelsie staying there, the house has been empty for more than three years and I've been paying $2000 a month to sustain it. That's in addition to my expenses here in Paris. Meanwhile, from a high value of $350K, it's descended to a low of about $220K, leaving me upside down by about $50-60K.

And the market isn't going to change for at least 5-10 years. By then, I will have plowed through all of my savings (along with thirty trillion hectares in FarmVille) and probably lose the house anyway.

Last summer, when I was in Arizona, my heart broke as I walked into my little home. Kelsie went out to buy some food for our dinner and I sat in the living room and cried. It wasn't that I wanted to live there again. Nor was it Kelsie's decorating skills (as she probably imagined). It was what the house represented to me. It was my quiet oasis where I could be alone and safe, surrounded by the colorful art and furniture I had collected from dumpsters all over the world. The doves cooing every morning on my back patio. The desert and its animals just a short walk down the street. I cooked and entertained there. I read books and had sex there (not at the same time, although, that might have been more interesting).

This last week, after selling my virtual FarmVille villa at a loss and buying a new adobe bungalow and decorating it with faux cactus, I called the real bank and stopped the automatic payments for my mortgage and home equity line of credit. I'm in the process of filling out the paperwork to have my real estate agent begin the short sale process and negotiate with the bank. If she can't sell it quickly, I will be in default and have to foreclose. I've never walked away from a debt, ever. It sickens me to do it now. All I can hang on to are the kind words of my realtor, when she wrote to console me, "Lisa, this is not your fault."

I hope I can convince myself of this. Otherwise, I'll just have to blame it on Rodolfo and Armand.