Cleaning House

            It’s one of the oldest metaphors and it should be, since the job is never done in either case. After six years of formal study in philosophy, which followed more than a decade of religious indoctrination, I always wrongly believed I understood what it meant to “know thyself.” I probably did. But one must account for denial. No is often an overlooked necessity. I learned that when one joins a Buddhist monastery the first thing they hand you is not a manuscript of the Dhammapada, or any other scroll full of teachings. It’s a broom. I believed I had it figured out. 

I took a week off, and the first few days were working; spent; spent working. I cleaned the toilets, but I failed, because I needed cleansers. I cleaned the tiles in the bathrooms, but this necessitated a new need. More failure. But things were cleaner. I vacuumed. I needed the machine for that; more needs: more failure. But things were cleaner. Dishes. Laundry. Folded clothes. Swept the hardwood floors. Wiped down the counters. Dusted the shelves. Brought out the window cleaner and did the windows. I wiped clean the framed pictures in the office, the place where poetry does not begin, but the place it passes through, on its way from wherever it once was, to wherever I was, and onto wherever a reader was reading it. I have pictures of others, for inspiration, perhaps, or just for the pure aesthetics of it, on the walls of that office. After some blue spray and some wiping, Charles Bukowski never looked better. Ezra Pound was never more clear. I did the sheets, and wished one could do the same with the sheets in the printer: just wash it all away and start over, leave new stains, with more beautiful patterns, patterns more indicative of life-making or love-making, and less indicative of waste. 

It all looked very good as I walked about the place, though realizing it is never done, but realizing the joy and peace I experienced in just doing it. For 48 hours I held my metaphorical broom, and had found my place in my monastery. 

            Something felt incomplete still the same; something felt still; something felt the same. After cleaning off the glass that housed the framed images and art I moved on to the windows. And then I looked in the mirror. And I realized, my work here is not only unfinished, but that I had hardly begun. 

It was a very dirty mirror, it still needed cleaning, but only when I looked into it. The surface was fine.