or how the drying of a single plate can be joyful/joy-full

Today’s title is my from sleeper favorite Smashing Pumpkins’ song, “Zero”, which, if you listen to, you should really crank up as loud as you can, which is what I always do when this song comes on. James Iha’s guitar riff on this song is impossible not to bang your head to.

I was not, historically, a very clean person. Some things, I’ve always been very organized about—schedules, calendars, books, what I’m carrying with me—and it’s not like I’m a slob. I have been a slob, from time to time: one stretch, in particular, I was working late shifts at a dive bar in NYC, getting home at 4am, sleeping until noon, going back to work, and my room was a fucking disaster—clothes everywhere, drawers open, no regard for my living space.

a still from a somewhat successful vine from that time period, where a stranger commented on how disgusting my room was

But domesticity, in any form, has never really been a forte of mine. Cooking, cleaning, nesting, houseplants—these aren’t really things I do, or things I did. I suppose I nested—my rooms always felt like mine, and I organized and set them up to feel that way; but one room does not a household make. I made food for myself, sometimes—but friends would often liken my personal culinary abilities and tastes to that of a small and incapable child: frozen chicken nuggets, cereal, toast, sometimes I would have spoonfuls of peanut butter for breakfast. I did not clean—I would pick up sometimes, I would organize sometimes, but cleaning—surfaces, vacuuming, sweeping, whatever, that was something I did not do.

I started thinking about cleaning once we got Nugget in 2017, because he sheds like a motherfucker and it’s not fun to live in, especially when your spouse has allergies and you aren’t working as much as he is. So I started cleaning, on a small scale and only occasionally. But though I would do it sometimes, out of necessity, I still hated it, every time. I hated it even more once I started cleaning more things in more ways: I would wipe the whole fucking kitchen down and then 5 seconds later, crumbs would be everywhere again. In my mind, it took up too much of my time, too much of my energy, for it to just be temporary and “domestic.” I did not have a ton of respect for these things—I grew up thinking that my brain was my superpower, and that only things requiring and showcasing my brain were worthwhile.

To make a long, meandering personal story short: if you had told me ten years ago that some of the most concrete feelings of accomplishment in my adult life would be doing dishes right after using them and putting them immediately back on shelves, or developing a weekly cleaning schedule where I effectively clean the whole house every week, or cooking a simple stir fry by myself, I would have either laughed in or thrown a punch at your face.

As my adult years have started going by, I’ve grown less and less interested in my brain and all the things it can do. I used to feel so superior about my intelligence; now I often feel ignorant, but not in a bad way—whatever that cliché is about wise men knowing they know nothing, etc. I used to feel like I wanted, needed to do, should do something “important” with my life and my time, like domestic things were beneath me, and that if I engaged in them, as someone who was socialized as a woman, I was effectively regressing into the 1950s.

Minimalism and Marie Kondo got me thinking about my surroundings and my relationships to things, and once I started thinking about taking care of the things in my life as much as I take care of anything else, cleaning became easier. I have never been an ambitious person, though I told myself I was for a long time; once I started questioning that, once I started being honest with myself about what’s healthy for me, the person I actually am and not the idea of myself I have in my mind, once I started looking at time as a gift and not as maddening countdown towards zero, I realized there was actually very little I could do with my time that was healthier, more meaningful, or more importantly contributory than caring for my immediate surroundings, or myself, or my loved ones.

I’m reading about Buddhism these days and trying to be present, trying to find joy in each present moment, and the next one, and the next one, and y’all, I have dried a single plate only to see my smiling face staring back at me. Who is this person, and why are they so happy doing nothing? But then, of course, it isn’t nothing: joy is rooted in care for and attention to the present, and why would a single plate deserve that any less than anything else? Why would I deserve that any less than “success,” or “accomplishment,” or any of those other words that, ultimately, mean very little to me and mainly inspire feelings of anxiety, inferiority, or judgement?

the very simple stir fry i made this week, on one of these single plates

It was hard to learn, don’t get me wrong, and sometimes I still hate cleaning, and sometimes I skip it because I don’t feel like it, and I’m still unpacking lots of resistance to and shame about being a femme person whose male spouse works in the world while they mostly take care of the home—but my surroundings have never been cleaner than they have been this last year, and my meals have never been healthier than they have been this last year, and my time has never been better spent than it has been when I choose to hone in on what’s in front of me and care for it. It brings me joy every time I manage to do it.

latelies

A new maybe sometimes section where I give you some things I’ve liked recently.

📺 // We did watch all of “WandaVision” which for me, like most TV now, got worse as the season went on, and I know fuck all about these comics so I was lost a lot of the time. I appreciated the attempts at style though, and I wish the second half had held up to how good the first few episodes were.

We’re also still making our way through “Seinfeld,” which I’ve never seen any of until now; I like the actual episodes a lot when they don’t involve social issues the coverage of which is inevitably tone deaf now, but I gotta tell y’all, I never laugh at the stand-up footage and that in and of itself is always kind of hilarious to me.

💿 // Recently found the album “T H E” by Japanese band tricot (spotify), which I described to Gemma as math rock shoe gaze. Because I do not speak Japanese, this has been a great album when I want to listen to music but don’t want words, but also don’t want pure instrumental or classical stuff.

I also, hilarious, have really been enjoying “Sailing The Seas Of Cheese” by Primus (spotify), which was NOT a band I ever listened to and I’m pretty sure I used to make fun of people with Primus t-shirts. I think maybe I thought this band was heavy metal, and it seems like a lot of the people who listen to it think it is heavy metal. I have never liked heavy metal or prog rock, the two most obvious genres that Primus might fit into, because I’ve always found them to be genres of music that take themselves, and that fans take, super seriously, and I have a self-made button that says “fuck you, irreverence is my life force” so you can imagine how I fared with these genres, and honestly if I want to listen to musically complex stuff, I’ll listen to actual classical or jazz, thank you very much. But M made me listen to some awhile back and I actually really like it—I’d describe Primus as punk prog rock, or a satire of heavy metal, and I find it musically interesting, artistic, and deeply irreverent.

📚 // Read Cold Millions by Jess Walter for March bookclub, and felt pretty meh about it ultimately. It was well-written and I liked it as I read it, but it felt like an A+ extra credit creative project for a history class, and this book did not make me miss reading books by white men, which I have done so sparingly over the last near-decade that I can always sense it immediately when I start one, and which never seem to prove me wrong by the end.

However, Insurrecto by Gina Apostol, which I finally picked up and actually read in January, was amazing, if you like weird, obtuse meta narratives, which I do. I used to be a big hoarder of books, used to pride myself on being able to lug around the boxes and boxes and boxes of books that were mine; now, I have two small shelves of books, one for nostalgic things like my HP books (fuck terfs, though) and Sailor Moon graphic novels, and one for nonfiction that is useful/wonderful and fiction that I loved so much I would read it again. There were only 10 books of fiction on that shelf, and Insurrecto immediately joined its ranks.

So, what about you? Are you a clean person, do you enjoy domestic things? Why or why not? What have you read/watched/listened to lately? I’d love for you to respond, even if it’s just a sentence or two about what’s going on with/for/around you, because I, as always, thank you for being here, and remain yours, ready to receive.