Of all the desultory tenderness of life to love, the household intimacies stand out.
Those happy sprayings, scrubbings and rinsings, those putter-headed hums and dumbed-down calms that come within the circular motions of the bummed, do-and-be-done domestic particularities — the dirty dishes, tubs of laundry, vacuuming, dusting, the toilets — chorish and boorish as they be, they rank, crank and bank sweet, summed satisfaction.
These make up the warp, woof and womp of wondrous, wellish world.
Cleaning is such a lovely craft.
The winkling out of the personal particular with sponge or rag, the wiping, staging and preserving of our stuff, and the tossing out and keeping in — this is the good life.
Life is a sorting, a chucking, a washing and a storing business. We hunker down, do our own work, make our own domestic map, live as we choose.
I love it.
I’m not for maids or house keepers, or yard guys either. I am my own standard of order, I vibrate to my own cleaning chord. I live as I choose on my own steamed-cleaned carpet, mown lawn, within my own weeded flower garden, my own mucked out lily pond, my own potted patio, in the cubicles of my own closet organizer, in my own self-painted bedroom.
And I wish to keep it this way. I will do my own household tasks, live close to my own humanity, make my own bed, clean my own toilet, go through my own drawers, say my own household prayers, wash my own dishes, mow my own yard, shave my own face, take out my own trash.
It’s sanity, this happy, safe, soothing seeing too oneself.
It isn’t humbling; it’s intimate.
Modern Soliloquies & Pastiches 