Routine Maintenance

I remember Barbra Streisand’s character in The Mirror has Two Faces once remarking during the period of moving in with her new husband in the movie, how amazing it is how much stuff you can accumulate over the years.  I make this same remark now, too, looking around me at the shelves of hardbound law books and pocketbooks (literally filling up an entire wall space), not to mention the pages of notes and scribbles and even photocopied legal history articles (I still have this insane notion that I’ll be able to use them as references for a future book) that have found their home on the floor.  Add pots of dead plants, a pile of discarded appliances and computer parts, a bunch of furniture and an overflowing closet of clothes and shoes due for a serious overhaul.  I literally have small pockets of “living spots” particularly identified and around which I’ve gradually made my way around my apartment over the past couple of years.

Not that the gradual accumulation of clutter came as a big shock.  I make dents here and there in my cleaning every now and then.  But at least once every day over those years I looked around me and the feeling of hopeless confusion has grown steadily heavier.  Especially since it became pretty obvious that I needed wall cracks patched and peeling wall paint repainted – it was quickly turning into a matter beyond my expertise.  My landlady once spoke to me about the idea of repainting my apartment several months back, but I could only give the vaguest nod.  No matter how much I needed the assistance, I also resented the intrusion of workers into my studio-type apartment, especially since my conversion into fulltime (or at least as fulltime as I could manage) writing.  And since I began keeping irregular hours (the facility of clearer thinking and better writing in the peaceful hours of the night have made a daysleeper out of me), it would hardly do to be napping at those “working hours” when the repairmen are due to overturn everything, quite possibly including my beloved bed.

The comic turn came when I learned that even the potential workers were reluctant to come and work on my place.  One look at the clutter was apparently enough to convince them that this might be heavier work than even they would wish for – especially since a pile of reams of paper necessarily puts into question the relative importance of such files, and the understandable prudence of not wanting to have anything to do with any potential loss of important documents.

The storm that came changed that, though.  Despite the necessary precautions, it was inevitable that during my prolonged absence moisture would have seeped in.  I’m just glad the flood didn’t come and wreak havoc in our area as it did everywhere else.  But moisture in confined quarters can do a hell of a lot of damage on its own, too.  Now I’m swallowing my pride and seeking what necessary assistance I could get, inconvenience aside and all.

Though even here, there’s room for some light-hearted banter, too.  What color, they asked me, would I prefer to have my apartment repainted in? With as straight a face as I could manage, I answered, “glittering gold,” and sent everyone into rocking laughter.

~ by dwanderingmind on October 10, 2009.