Meditation

I was going to muse about clutter today, the literal stuff that sits in piles on the dining room table, takes its shape in unread books by the side of the bed, a pair of cuffed gray pants that need to be shortened, hanging over the chair in my bedroom, a small wooden one with a fabric seat that I bought in Millerton, New York that does nothing but hold wraps, a shoulder bag that I knit out of the fattest purple yarn, yarn in linen bags, bags that came free with the other stuff in the order. I was going to write about pushing clutter back, the clutter in the house, the clutter in the mind so you don't end up like the frail, elderly English people sitting with greasy strands of white hair sitting on metal folding chairs outside their home last Saturday afternoon as people riffled through their house -- thousands of books! -- the notice said, but plaster was falling from the ceiling, the books were piled to the ceiling, garbage overflowed cans, the proverbial cans of cat food, open on the counter, dried food in the pans on the stove, a pair of underwear lying in the hallway, a hand-written sign on a door that said Don't come in, person sleeping, and the smell, the smell of too many things. I was going to muse about the panic of clutter, things standing for thoughts, the mind a room that needs to be cleaned up, not gone through, not so much riffled but blown up, blown away.