2006-06-25 - 2:31 p.m.
Here is something I thought I would never in my life say--I had a fantastic time cleaning house, yesterday.
This is something that ordinarily I avoid doing with every trick in the book, and since it is I, myself, who am my own policeman, I always get away with it! I reason with myself that I have worked hard all week and now that it is the weekend, I deserve some relaxation, some fun, or just plain doing whatever (or nothing) I want. And housework, I never want!
Of course, ultimately with things like this, I am also the one to suffer with piles of dirty dishes (the longer you wait, the harder they are to clean), no clean clothes, an embarrassingly dirty bathroom, and I don't even want to say what else.
I think if I ever developed the "good housewife" habit of organized daily, weekly, and monthly cleaning, the whole thing would be smooth and trouble-free (and if I exercise and if I get enough sleep and if I paid my bills the minute they came in the door and if I...too many good habits to develop, so little time!).
Well, things had really reached a head, or had gone to seed, or to pot, or some other suitable cliche', and finally, I no longer had any choice, I simply had to earmark this weekend for housecleaning and this time, not even I was going to let me get away with not doing it.
I woke up very early yesterday morning, just simply popped right out of bed, pulled on a comfortable pair of boxer shorts, and got my breakfast going. While that was happening, I made coffee, choosing as a treat a "chocolate and raspberry" flavored grind that normally might be a dessert coffee, but I just felt like having it. I also treated myself to not only jam on my toast (sugar-free jam), but underneath the jam was crunchy peanut butter. All of this was in keeping with the requirements of my diet, no problem.
I didn't tarry over breakfast, though, because for some reason, I was in the mood and raring to go.
I made a most unusual decision, to NOT put on any music. Ordinarily, music playing was a necessity for doing this kind of work, but something within me nixed that idea. "Just do this work 'pure' and let your thoughts flow however they may," went my inspiring thoughts. Where that came from I don't know, maybe something I learned or figured out while in my sleep state. Perhaps whatever it was that got me out of bed so fast also made me leave the music off.
The day proceeded beautifully, an hour of kitchen cleaning here, an hour of bathroom cleaning there, interspersed with several trips to the laundry room or dumping trash in the dumpster, or sorting through and organizing various piles of flotsam and jetsom. I just did this stuff with full mindedness and never even really noticed the passage of time save for the periodic ringing of my timer to let me know that it was time to take a load out of the washer to put into the dryer, or to bring a completed dryer load upstairs to sort, fold, and put away.
I did manage to stop for a late lunch (had some delicious chicken breasts, stir fry vegetables, and spanish rice) and even wrote a few things on the Internet WITHOUT getting so caught up in that that I stayed online the rest of the day and forgot my earlier resolve. No, I actually was completely in control!
My apartment is on the third and top floor of the building on the southwest quadrant of the courtyard looking down over the pool. From the apartment proper (I'd say "living room," except it is also the "bedroom" and "office"), I have a view of the Hollywood Hills and the "Hollywood" sign but going a right angle around into the kitchen, my view is simply straight across the courtyard to the southeast version of my same apartment. Nothing much to see there.
The kitchen window is a two-panel sliding glass window, with the opening part being on the right half, which is also right in front of the sink. I have installed a box fan on the ledge above the sink at the place of that open window, the only place I could put it, since it is just solid glass on the other half of the window. But since I have nothing much to see out of that window anyway, I'd rather have the fan there.
There is no air conditioning in this apartment, and so cooling is dependent upon this box fan and one other that is in the apartment proper, also on a window ledge.
Summer is here with a vengeance, it is very hot, and I could hear people off and on swimming in the pool all day. Both fans had to be on. Still, the kitchen was pretty hot, but with that fan blowing I am always inserted into some kind of delicious childhood memory. For the life of me, I can't think of the exact time and place, only the feeling of an atmosphere, I must have been about eight years old so we're talking about a summer in the mid-1950s and I guess it was North Carolina, but I think of a country kitchen somewhere in the rural south before the advent of air conditioning. There is a falling-off-its-hinges blackened screen door that keeps being slammed open and shut as people go in and out of there, letting big black flies in, ordering barbecue. Up in the corner of the ceiling is a huge fan swiveling back and forth, churning up a tornado for those black flies (that end up stuck on hanging ringlets of fly paper). There for sure is a big old black woman cook, built like a refrigerator, who knows how with a friendly chuckle ("Yassaw, we gots some GOOD barbecue TODAY!") to whip up some food that you would absolutely die for--she's got pork and she's got hush puppies and cornbread and she's got potato salad and cole slaw and she's got corn on the cob dripping with butter and huge hunks of watermelon and an ice-cold Coke in a pale green bottle ("Lessee, I got that opener arounds here somawares...") that she pours into a frosted glass just for you and you can have seconds and thirds if you want, but you best save room for her home-made peach ice cream and she maybe even made a triple-layer cake with lemon frosting, and if not that, then there's custard or chocolate pudding, or maybe banana pudding with vanilla wafer cookies.
Being in my hot kitchen with that fan on, I am immediately thrown back into that wonderful mysterious southern kitchen and my heart just sings.
Darkness had fallen and I still had some more work to do in the kitchen (yes, that many dirty dishes, but by now I had done all my laundry, thoroughly cleaned the bathroom top to bottom, and my bed was now made with fresh, clean sheets and comforter...but the blanket I folded up and put into the closet). So I set myself up in front of my cooling fan and began to methodically clean the remaining dishes, silverware, cups and glasses, pots and pans, and lids. I somehow got into an intelligent rhythm, like the groove of washing dishes, as I efficiently utilized the right half of the large sink while on the left half I temporarily stacked the just-scrubbed items, until there wasn't enough room in the water, then I'd make more room by rinsing off some of the larger items and placing them into the dish drying rack, efficiently continuing in this manner until the sink was too full of water and no more room, at which time I'd empty the water and rinse off the cleaned items. I also used my various tools like an artist or a journeyman, the copper Chore Boy, or the sponge, or the nylon Tuffy, or the brush, using whatever was appropriate at any given time for attacking whatever had baked, cooked, or dried on whatever surface there was (stainless steel, glass, porcelain, china).
Finally there was one moment when I was forearm-deep in the warm water, swirling the Chore Boy around and around on the smooth surface of a dish, the cool fan blowing onto my face, and someone down below in the courtyard was gently treading water in the pool, I could hear the sound of the laps of water splashing, and suddenly I felt like I, too, was in that pool, or another one like it, or some body of water, a southern summer evening where the air is still hot and the ocean is warm but delicious to slip into as the tree frogs shriek in time with the crickets' music, perhaps skinny-dipping, but at any rate, suddenly merged into the deep, dark, wonderful deliciousness of the all that is, floating in an atmosphere of total delight, peace, and happiness, enveloped by nature and feeling completely at home in the world. I couldn't believe that I could feel so relaxed, so happy, so content, doing something that I absolutely hated, yet I wouldn't have traded places with that person in the pool or with anybody else. I felt no different than if I were floating in the pool, except that I was having that feeling and getting something done, too.
Is that what turning the background music off can do? Shutting out the noise and distraction and going deeper into one's self?
I got so much work done, tasks I had avoided for months...perhaps this was because my energy wasn't weakened by dividing between half-listened-to music and half-doing work, but instead I worked with a wholeness and full-mindedness so I could relax into the eternal now of what I was doing and so that suddenly every feeling was one of connectedness and timeless joy.
Whatever had gotten me up early that morning (and then again this morning, too) must have been a "knower" who knew what gift lay in store for me, perhaps had always known. I want to have it again and again! I wonder, is the sure way to that bliss...housework? Is that what is meant by the Buddhist concept of "chop wood, carry water?"
"Sensei, what did you do before you achieved enlightenment?"
"Swept the floor."
"So what did you do after achieving enlightenment?"
"Swept the floor."
We're human, this is what we do. "Cleanliness is next to Godliness."
Be still.
Pay attention.
Do.
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