Day 4: Cleaning House
We spent the better part of the morning cleaning up our apartment. 3 days worth of dishes in the sink, White Claws and IPAs on the coffee table (the residue from a Zoom birthday party), and the general detritus inherent to a shelter which is lived in 24/7. Now that we spend twice as much awake time inside, and cook an extra meal every day, it’s a constant battle to keep things even somewhat orderly. A side thought I had while scrubbing out the Vitamix: Remember how clean the hotel was in the Shining? The herculean effort Wendy must have put into housekeeping, while Jack was off “all work and no play”ing… I can’t believe she wasn’t the one to go crazy.
By dint of being home all the time, the Sisyphean efforts that go into cleaning are all the more apparent. Living creates disorder, creates dirt and non-right angles. I have found pairs of my shoes in 3 different rooms. We are the direct cause of all of that — we see it immediately as it happens. There’s delight in tidiness and order, but it also requires effort to achieve, and it never ends. Can there be joy in the cycle? Can we imagine Sisyphus happy? And, really, if not for cleaning, what else is there to keep us busy? There’s nothing like a pandemic to make you acutely familiar with the Absurd.
There most certainly is meaning in the struggle, but I also see meaning in the little moments in between the struggle. An example: to linger for a time over a cold brew in the mid-morning with the empty cans all around and the blankets on the floor and the person you love next to you — that’s what it’s about. The literal and metaphorical cans will always need to be literally and metaphorically recycled, and they can’t be ignored forever. But they can be ignored for a time, and countless happinesses can fill the spaces inbetween.
There’s an art to appreciating these in-betweens. To move up and down Maslow’s hierarchy without too much consternation — that’s an essential skill that must be cultivated. Part of that is my firm belief that I can control where to turn my attention. Indeed, I can view the never-ending cleaning cycle with dread if I wish, but the more I seek delight in my life, the more I see that there is plenty of it. From that perspective, delights are the norm, with times of struggle interspersed between.
I suppose this is a way of clarifying why I feel the need to record these little run-on trains of thought that may only be comprehensible to me, and also why the 30 days of writing appeared to me at just the right time. The routines I have been forced into over the past 6 weeks have been jarring, and it is easy to succumb to the boredom and despair. I have succumbed many, many times since the quarantine began. At the same time, my capacity to revel in the little things has increased all the more — which is something in itself to delight in.
