Sunday, June 29, 2008
If you were heartbroken, would you "sell" your life?
New River Journal
What would you do if you discovered you were tired of your life? What if what you thought was stable and permanent all fell apart in your hands? Maybe you would throw yourself into your work, devoting yourself to good causes and changing the world for the better. Maybe you would indulge yourself in those things you've always wanted to do but never gotten around to -- go traveling, hike the Appalachian Trail or hitchhike to Memphis, Tenn., to visit Graceland.
Maybe you would build a boat in your garage and take it to the Florida Keys. Maybe you would collect beer-bottle caps and nail them to all the trees in your yard in life-size illustrations of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
Maybe you would finally write that book or record that album you've been thinking about. Maybe you would sit in the dark alone and play video games until your fingers cramped and your wrists seized up with carpal tunnel syndrome. There are uncountable answers to such open-ended questions, but I doubt either you or I would have come up with "sell the whole thing on eBay!"
Ian Usher came to Perth, Australia, a few years ago, emigrating from Darlington, a city of about 100,000 in mid-eastern England. Perth is in Western Australia and is home to about 1.4 million residents. Usher got a job in a rug shop in Perth, and later worked traveling back and forth to a gold mine.
Eventually the gold mine work schedule became too much and he moved back to Perth and the rug shop. His description of his life then seemed exciting from my outsider's viewpoint -- he had an interesting job, a home in an exotic location, a circle of friends and a collection of unusual hobbies.
But a couple of years ago some unspecified heartbreak happened between him and his wife, and they separated and divorced. After a couple of years on his own in the home originally built for two, feeling at loose ends, he decided to sell his entire life in an auction on eBay and move on.
When I say "entire life," I do mean everything. Usher has been remarkably thorough in what he is offering in his eBay auction. The largest item in the package is his house -- a three-bedroom brick home in the Perth suburb of Wellard. It boasts a two-vehicle garage, a poured limestone patio with native plants, an automatic watering system, a hot tub and a hammock and barbecue equipment.
That garage isn't empty: Usher is including his car (a Mazda 929), a Kawasaki motorcycle, a jet ski and a mountain bike. The house isn't empty, either.
The sale includes electronics and entertainment items -- a ceiling-mounted projector connected to a TV, a PlayStation, DVD player, games, laptop, scanner, printer, movie and still cameras. It also includes all the furnishings, a completely outfitted kitchen and his entire wardrobe (he's 5 feet 10 inches).
His hobbies are part of the deal; the winner will also get everything you need to go skydiving (except the airplane), a trainer kite for kite surfing (a parasail that you dangle from while being towed behind a boat) and camping gear.
Besides all his stuff, Usher is including a potential job and a potential social life. His good-natured Perthian friends have agreed to meet the buyer and make introductions and help them get to know Perth. His employer at the rug shop has agreed to take on the winner for a couple of weeks, with a permanent job possible if the person works out.
The only things he is not selling are his identity, an Australian green-card and his wallet. When the auction is finished, he plans to walk out the front door with his eBay earnings, his wallet and the clothes on his back. He says he is going to go to the airport and buy a ticket on whatever flight is leaving next.
What would you do? What would I do? It's hard to imagine parting with all that stuff. As the late, great, George Carlin said, "A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. ... If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time." Which is just what Ian Usher plans to do.
Pris Sears grew up in Florida, lives in Blacksburg and works among Virginia Tech's computers.
