Cleaning Up My Act
Mar. 11th, 2009 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloI dust the model village and its inhabitants with a little, retractable brush that came out of Ailz's make-up bag. The dust curls away like smoke, vanishing into the air to settle someplace else. That was always my objection to housework; you only ever move the gunk around; it's a treadmill you never get off.
A bit like life, in fact.
Life as housework. Keeping the dust at bay- the dust to which we shall all return.
Brrrrrrr......
I was never a great one for housework- and it's not just because I'm a bloke. My three primary female role models- my mother and two grandmothers- were exactly the same. As middle-class, mid-century women they used to pay people (poorer women) to do it for them.
And then there's the Bohemian thing. How very bourgeois it is to care about appearances- and what the neighbours think. Dirt and dust are real. Like sex, like death. Embrace them all!
But, I don't know, I seem to be changing. These past few weeks I've taken to carrying a duster in my pocket. Now, if I find myself at a loose end, I can whip it out and drag it across surfaces. The dust is encroaching and will win in the end- but I intend to go down fighting. Non passeran!
We have friends from church coming to tea this afternoon and I have been tidying, dusting- even mopping floors. And because these are friends from church I have temporarily purged the model village of its "figures of an erotic nature". (Check 'em out here.) I lift the little, naked people out of the castle keep, tickle them all over with the retractable make-up brush and put them away in a cupboard. The dust swirls and disappears. Does this make me a hypocrite?
A bit like life, in fact.
Life as housework. Keeping the dust at bay- the dust to which we shall all return.
Brrrrrrr......
I was never a great one for housework- and it's not just because I'm a bloke. My three primary female role models- my mother and two grandmothers- were exactly the same. As middle-class, mid-century women they used to pay people (poorer women) to do it for them.
And then there's the Bohemian thing. How very bourgeois it is to care about appearances- and what the neighbours think. Dirt and dust are real. Like sex, like death. Embrace them all!
But, I don't know, I seem to be changing. These past few weeks I've taken to carrying a duster in my pocket. Now, if I find myself at a loose end, I can whip it out and drag it across surfaces. The dust is encroaching and will win in the end- but I intend to go down fighting. Non passeran!
We have friends from church coming to tea this afternoon and I have been tidying, dusting- even mopping floors. And because these are friends from church I have temporarily purged the model village of its "figures of an erotic nature". (Check 'em out here.) I lift the little, naked people out of the castle keep, tickle them all over with the retractable make-up brush and put them away in a cupboard. The dust swirls and disappears. Does this make me a hypocrite?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-03-11 06:26 pm (UTC)Besides, I think that the naked people are probably okay with going indoors for a little while. Especially since you tickled them with a little brush first!
besides, if they're happy doing the thinks naked people do out in plain sight, just think of what they might get up to out of sight!
no subject
Date: 2009-03-11 08:47 pm (UTC)