Tuesday 2 May 2006

On the other hand

I like cleaning. When I first moved to that squat in highgate I went mad, though. Those stairs with 3 inches of dust, never been mopped, windows were grey so much dirt, mushrooms growing happily in the bathrooms, filthy. I had a bedroom just for me in North Finchley, breakfast and dinner included, paid, but I met my ex on the stairs of that building when visiting a friend and went dumb. Moved in and started cleaning. Had to put up with an unbelievable amount of arrogance and mental illness and on the top of that do some extra thinking. That thinking wasn't mine.

I believe when we clean we think. We clean ourselves while cleaning our environment and an extremely dirty home means people who live there are not dealing with their mental issues. If I clean for myself, I deal with myself but if I clean someone else's place I'm thinking what them repressed twats should be thinking, not I. Well, it's gone, forgiven if not forgotten.

Nowadays I wipe my own table wiping those thoughts away. I can see resentments mingled with bleach in my bucket, which I flush down the drain blissfully. Cleaning my windows makes my sight reach the once remote and rinsing my dishes unblocks my stomach, setting adrift on my anxieties.

There's a healthy level of dirt of course, the biological dirt, natural, and healthy levels of unatural dirt as we could never get rid of all issues at once but I.m cultivating my own mess in my own house now. I have my own place, a new chapter of my life begins, and cleaning and thinking belongs to my baby and I alone.

10 comments:

Indigobusiness said...

Zackly.

Filth is another story entirely. The thought brings out the germaphobe in me. Cleaning house can certainly be a literal and figurative form of magic.

If your baby reference was literal and not figurative, congratulations on a transformative new chapter in your life.

Sail on, sailor. Calm seas and auspicious gales.

DAVE BONES said...

dust? there was three inches of pigeon shit before that! ha ha welcome back!

Anonymous said...

I concour. Yesterday I cleaned my flat's toilet and guess what, after 3 hours it was dirty all over again. Wasn't me of course but that's the magic about living together. Isn't it (or isn't it?)

Lazy said...

I never had such sparkling windows. That was an April Wednesday, I was thinking "Looks like she's settling in for a long stay...", and then some fucker on Oakeshott Avenue spots the Latina beauty scrubbing my windows and shouts "Slavery!" That would have been feminist Zac... I scrawled "No Feminists!" on my door after that...

The trees were in bloom with little pink flowers and the world was beautiful, then. It still is, and the little pink flowers are in bloom again.

Lazy said...

That was about an inch of pigeon shit, and two inches of sludgy decomposing pigeon.

Lazy said...

I only just noticed how indigobusiness opened his comment with "Zackly"...

The cleaning job she did was not Zackly at all...

Poor Zac. Poor poor Zac. I wonder what on earth happened to him? God bless his damaged autistic soul.

Hertz Hertz said...

I miss Zac

DAVE BONES said...

ahhh Zac!!!! come back! All is forgiven.

Indigobusiness said...

Zackly

Lazy said...

"but I met my ex on the stairs of that building when visiting a friend and went dumb. Moved in and started cleaning. Had to put up with an unbelievable amount of arrogance and mental illness and on the top of that do some extra thinking. That thinking wasn’t mine."

I know I had to put up with an unbelievable amount of arrogance and mental illness, darling, but I forgive you now.

Oh, and thank you for doing my thinking for me. I'm lost without you.