have been trying to make up a lease agreement for the housemate and housemates-to-be by lifting wholesale from the document i signed for my present apartment. this is not as great as it appears. everything sounds cold and litigous, what with threatened evictions and confisactions of property and similar draconian punishment. there's a fine line to be walked -- obviously i don't want to run the place like a penintentiary, but ones interests have to be protected. specific problems: do we charge for washer and dryer use? presumably not. put in a clause about loud noise? i would like to think that this is something that can be sorted out amicably, but perhaps that's too optimistic? the crux of the matter is this: in the utopia i construct in my mind, living together in a house is entirely different from living in separate apartments. specifically, common space breeds common responsibility, and social reciprocity and threatened tit-for-tat in a repeated game is enough to enforce a basic level of cooperation among players. also, to the best of my ability, i'm going to try not to get people off the street (or craigslist) and stick to folks who are minimally friends of friends (of friends). is that totally naive? i don't want to evict anyone! there was a notice taped to the door of my apartment complex when the mother and i returned home from dinner one evening a couple of weeks ago -- someone in the block had defaulted on their rent for 2 months -- and it was just the most humiliating thing, worse than a pig's head, i think, all official and stamped and signed. it's like this: i'm cynical about humanity, but i don't put the people i know into that category. is that an awful failing? and -- even more frightening -- isn't the alternative -- not fully trusting anyone, never thawing the final layer of frost -- isn't that alternative far, far worse?