n e u f n e u f: tilting dust bunnies

08 February 2007

tilting dust bunnies

On a recent housecleaning adventure day at my house I used this picture to give an idea of my vexation over the mishaps along the way. Some people thought I meant my house was this much of a mess. No. It really needed dusting and wiping and scrubbing, but it's not very messy. My mind fills with this stuff just as the excellent Don Quixote's did in the Cervantes novel. I've always loved this Gustave Doré for its depiction of the gallant madman's psyche. I feel like a gallant madwoman all the time, tilting dust bunnies, duelling vacuum cleaner, bellowing leftist invective at the toilet bowl.

The deal is: I stew about the world while cleaning. Wild scenarios dance in my head as vividly as Don Quixote's. There would be more bodiless -- formerly talking -- heads lying around. As I clear my desk of a hundred framed photographs to give it a good cleaning, I can opt to leave it bare, or fill it with other things, but I'm imagining hauling a hundred senators out of the Capitol as I'm doing it. And it's as easy to do in my mind as clearing my desk. The toilet they've made of the White House as easy to sanitize as this one. Headless arms dealers stacked like cordwood. Defense contractors filed neatly away in metal cabinets, if you get my drift. When I set to house-cleaning, I am like Don Quixote making himself and the world fit for the fair Dulcinea. My mind is ablaze with victories on the field of honor.

You can't know how many times I've been swinging from the earlobes of one person or another, only to have them ask what windmill I'd like them to tilt for me next. The deal is: I'm not hallucinating. They might have a point about the uselessness of some of the attempts to improve things I think up, but they surely won't improve if we do nothing. I'M NOT HALLUCINATING! If you can't bring yourself to try something vivid and real where it will yank people out of this filthy cycle, YOU ARE.

It's this bad.

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