Thursday, February 07, 2008
::mess versus zen::
You know that Janis Joplin song - “Just take another little piece of my heart, now baby”? Well, to the tune of that song, I walk around my house singing in my head: “Just zen another little piece of my house, now baby.” I have a new policy (aside from the day to day cleaning that always happens) of tackling one little ‘zen’ task at a time - one drawer, one cupboard, sort one pile…
I am not a naturally tidy person - but I would like to be. I hate mess, I can’t relax in mess. I also deplore and despise housework...but I force myself to do it because, after all, I’m the grown up that lives here, right? So it’s kind of my job. My house may appear tidy to visitors - but just don’t look in the corners too hard, and please don’t open any cupboards.
I love this post Keri Smith wrote about mess, process, chaos etc. Go and read it - if you are remotely messy - it will cheer you up. It cheers me up so much that I printed it out and stuck it in my journal.
I also have a terrible habit of starting creative projects - whether they be writing, craft, art, gardening - but not always completing them. I tend to have more ideas than I have energy or time. I’m trying to change this about myself. I also have cupboards bursting with art and craft materials for things I MIGHT get to one day...then I read in this book, that the clutter we have which isn’t about nostalgia (photos, letters etc) is often about POTENTIAL, as in “I’m keeping my tennis racquet from high school, because I might get back into it one day” or “I don’t know how to do ***** but I admire it and would like to do it one day, so I’ll just collect all the stuff and maybe one day...” This resonated - so I have been narrowing my ideas of what I do and do not want to do, and getting rid of the extraneous. Giving things to the arts recycling centre, to friends, to make more room in my life (and head) for the good stuff I’m actually engaged in.
Case in point, the box above used to contain beads which I had gleaned over years and years from here and there thinking that “one day I might want to make necklaces”. Well, I’m pretty clear now that with the small amount of creative time I get, I do not want to make necklaces. I want to make poems, gardens, art things, knitted things, sewn things and food things - and that is more than enough for one woman with not much time to herself, right?
So I’ve bagged up the beads to mail to a friend who DOES spend her time making necklaces, and I rounded up all the buttons that were in little bowls, tins, drawers around the house and “zenned another little piece of my house, now baby....
you ought to try it - it makes you feel good.”
