how charmed lives are finite

I've been thinking about looking for a new place to live for a while, not too seriously - I love my roommates and it's such a pain in the ass to move. But I realized while walking home on Sunday afternoon and seeing a plastic bag of excrement on my way home (the second such plastic bag this month!) that it would be nice to live in a neighborhood where the smell of urine isn't so common, because I do enjoy doing errands on foot, and I actually can afford it, and I work in the City now so I could live in a beautiful, enchanting neighborhood instead of the leather & urine district. I guess until now I've been secretly hoping someone would just ask me to move in and make it effortless, but it might be time I actually start looking.

Our friend came over last night. His live-in girlfriend (or rather, he's the live-in boyfriend, since she was there first) told him she couldn't do it anymore, and he stayed the night on our spare mattress on the floor. I told friends over a year ago that I saw this coming, so I'm almost surprised it lasted so long, but I'm not sure what either of them is going to do - because not only do they occupy the same stiflingly tiny San Francisco art scene, but neither of them works more than 3 days a week - when you share a room in a 4-bedroom and your rent is so low you can afford to rent a studio to paint in and still work only 3 days a week, any breakup is a full lifestyle change. So in a way, doing that I'm young and I don't have to have a full-time job or have a lot of money thing puts you a lot closer to a dependency like a 1950s marriage, even if you're not the one with the live-in boyfriend or girlfriend, because the breakup of anyone in the apartment could put the entire household in flux (which could be up to 8 people!) - and then it stops being about relationships and starts being about the money.