Having and Being Had

by Eula Biss

but when I look at any one thing I don’t find it beautiful.

What I wanted, more than anything, was the illusion of permanence the house provided.

My adult life, I decide, can be divided into two distinct parts—the time before I owned a washing machine and the time after.

Nearly all people in nearly all nations, for nearly all of human history, he observes, have been poor. Widespread poverty is not an anomaly. But widespread affluence is.

the independence, the insularity, the security, the illusion of not needing other people.

Because what she means is not that stories are the stuff of life, but that we lie to ourselves. Self-deception has always been her subject.

In this sense, riding in traffic is not unlike being a woman among men. You’re

Cars make you stupid, in the way wealth makes you stupid. In the way any sort of power makes you stupid, really. And it is this, my own stupidity, that I dislike most about driving.

This rule enhanced my awareness of how my friends extend and limit what I know and understand.