Most Beautiful House

This is the opening paragraph of a wonderful book, entitled "The most Beautiful House in the World." The author uses a parable of wanting to build a boat in order to run a narrative on our relation to the domestic built environment. I replaced all his personal and nautical references, with my own.

It began with the dream of a wave. At a certain moment in my life (i was 27), i was struck with what seemed like an irresistible urge to become a surfer-or more accurately, to acquire a board.
This idiosyncrasy was not hereditary. There were no surfers in my background; my ancestral roots were in middle usa, several hundred miles from the pacific. As far as i knew, my american forebearers were sober, professional men, men of land, not water-not a kahanamoku among them. I don't want to give the impression that i wanted to run away to sea. I was no armchair Robert Lewis Stevenson, i had no fantasy of surfing the south seas. Still, every wave dream has some suggestion of escape-in my case, escape from responsibilities, from the perils of everyday life.

original exert from;
'The Most Beautiful House in the World' by, Witold Rybczynski. Peguin Books 1990