letter #8
we're all making our own sense of things
I spent a lot of the weekend cleaning my house. Most of my 'cleaning' means I go into a room, pick up an armful of things that don't belong there, then go from room to room putting things where they belong until my arms are empty. Then I pick up another armful of things and begin the process again. I can't imagine what the productivity experts would say if they saw me walking around and around the house, my movements seemingly random but my steps constantly retraced. I trip over the dog, let the cat outside. She's grown tired of all the movement.
I do this--I clean the house--a couple of times each year. The last time I did it was the week before Christmas, friends arriving for drinks, a party, to stay for a week. Since then the piles of things have grown ever-higher, ever-wider on the chairs in the corners, the ends of the benches, the flat surfaces inside the front door. The dust has grown so thick that you can see it when you walk into a room. I'm sure there is more dust than there ever used to be. Perhaps because it is so dry now and because these days the windy season stretches far beyond November.
As I clean, I swing between feelings of martyrdom and catharsis. Martyrdom: Why am I the only one who ever dusts behind the lounge or washes the vegetable drawer? Catharsis: How freeing it feels to shine the mirrors and fold the clothes.
With the radio tuned to the nostalgia of Double-J, I put the vegetables in a pot to simmer a stock, dig out the packet of instant yeast for fresh hot cross buns tomorrow.
This is my autumn-clean, so much more satisfying than a spring-clean. In autumn, I am preparing to hunker-down. Knowing that polished surfaces will glow in the soft light of the lamps we light when we come home. That we will curl on the lounge, rugs pulled up to our shoulders, our ugg boots on. I think of the words I will write in the afternoon light, the words and the light as crisp and clear as each other.
It's entirely romanticised I know. There will be viruses; resentment at having to go out into the cold night to collect a teenager from a party; too much time together stuck inside. In August, I will look at my words and realise I have written nothing that anyone needs to read. The piles of things will build, the layers of dust will grow, the winter will go on and on.
But for now, I feel the change in seasons in my body and my mind. It is three years since I moved into this house, heard its mudlarks and its magpies, watched the leaves of the plane trees cover our front lawn. My love was flying back and forth from Abu Dhabi. I was more lonely, but more at home than I had ever been before.
I can't think of how to end this letter. I want a short paragraph, three lines, maybe four. A demonstration of how cleaning is simultaneously a chance to cleanse and a chance to pretend we have control over life's uncertainties and frailties. I did write an ending like that. It was a mix of hope and melancholy, the words were soft and the cadence smooth. But then I went and had a shower and when I came back all I could see was the naff. Because I mean, it was just cleaning, wasn't it? I had no great flashes of insight while I scrubbed, felt no epiphanies. I didn't even finish the house. The bathroom's still got gucky grout and the vacuum cleaner house is jammed. By the end of it, I was still grumpy because my kid's bike got nicked from the tram stop, and I was still terrified of what's happening to our planet. But there is one truth: I do prefer autumn to spring.
Thank you for reading
tc xx
I watched After Life on Netflix and I can see why people love it, but I didn't. When it comes to Ricky Gervais, I was a fan and then I absolutely wasn't, and After Life didn't convince me. Also I thought the last episode was cliched and over-written. Then I watched Dirty John, but I wasn't really paying attention so it's probably not surprising that it didn't grab me. Last night we watched the Fyre Festival doco ... I was completely depressed about the state of the instaperfect world by the end of it, but fairly satisfied with my own simple life here at the bottom of the world. If you're looking for a book, I highly recommend Flights by Olga Tokarczuk