As I went to wash last nights dishes this morning… (yeah, I used to think that was gross… now I’m older though…) the words, wish washing the dishes, showed up internally, more as a feeling than as words, somewhere between my chest and not quite the top of my head.
This then became a proposal, make a wish with each of the dishes you wash, cutlery not included ?… IDK.
First one was, I wish I had a dish washer, second, I wish I had a cleaner (who waited outside my house until they saw me going out looking like I would be out for more than just a couple of minutes), then when I came home, like magic, all my dishes were washed.
I’m good with putting them away myself as I know where I want them and that changes some days and not others (again… IDKW).
The third one was less spontaneous and just before it appeared… I noticed droplets of shame dripping inside me like some kind of unwelcome but necessary sludge stuff.
So, I went back to spontaneity and found something to blame for my horridness.
The third wish was… I wish I had never read Against Nature, a book written by a French person called Joris-Karl Huysmans.
The title in French is Á Rebours.
This book and the ideas in it that stay with me… and the relief of finding a scapegoat for my shame alongside the satisfaction of getting the dishes washed found me smiling as I imagined making a wish each time I wash my dishes.
It’s that books fault that I am the way I am… wtf… y… idk.
This whole… what shows up for no apparent reason… and then riffs almost seemingly in it’s own little world, barely connected to me… and deep inside me… thing… opens up feelings, fears and joys that I didn’t know were in me… such as, I have never likes dishwashers, I recognise that when you have several people, like maybe family, living and sharing the same kitchen and stuff, a dishwasher may seem almost essential… but otherwise I don’t feel they offer much… and… I quite like washing the dishes… or… I like how it feels when they have been washed by me.
Also, why did I not want to be in my home when the person I paid to wash my dishes was also here… this goes into my shame thing, along the lines of why should someone else have to do something for me while I can do it easily and without all the faff of them coming round to mine and that?
Now I’m on this… if someone was in my home and doing stuff, I’m not sure I could be here doing very little, or doing inconsequential stuff, while they did loads or all of the essential stuff. And that takes me into all sorts of spins offs around my need for what I understand as independence and not exploiting others who maybe have more important responsibilities.
Although there are contradictions here… let’s leave them to fester in a dark corner for now hey?
So, I have left some stuff that needs something else explaining… the book, Against Nature.
The main character in this story, Jean des Esseintes, creates his life and house so that he hardly ever has to interact with other people… and that is where the not wanting my dish washer person to be in the house when I am there overlaps… I kind of hope not… reality is too scary?… and… maybe… somehow I’m hiding from my own insecurities by dreaming of no longer taking part in building any kind of relationship with other people?
And I guess, feeling that shame of a need to escape any responsibility to interact with people, or contribute… reading that book, many many years ago and since, leaves me feeling that I get how Jean des Esseintes feels… wanting to be able to exclude myself… and this has run way off line and out of several windows and back round again in forever tangled complex twists and turns… so again, lets leave this here.
Opening something that dropped in for me while writing this, I saw something on Tv decades ago about a guy who was living in a beautiful modern built wood house, it was small and had lots of the wood exposed on the inside and outside. So it looked like a lovely wooden single story house and sat in ear shot of a stream, running through a dene.
He had been sent there, I think he might have been a monk of some sort, and lived there by himself leading a quiet life. He had previously lived in a shared community and described not being happy about having to look after his new home and himself, all by himself now.
Cleaning up and cooking and washing dishes pissed him off.
Until one morning, after breakfast, he noticed the patterns of the grain in the wood he was wiping down with a cloth on the kitchen bench top.
As he smiled to himself and looked out of the window at the trees nearby, he realised that he was continuing to look after this wood, from these trees and had an “ah ha” moment.
He described how this changed and impacted his relationship with his home… and with himself.
I am confident I have remembered this phrase pretty accurately… he said;
“I no longer felt that looking after my home was about just cleaning and scrubbing and tidying, and realised that every time I wiped down a counter or cooked or made my bed, I took care of my space here, and paying attention to that caring, I wasn’t cleaning up, I was caring for and caressing my environment.”
That shift from this as a task, to this is me choosing to interact intimately with all the life and love and creativity within and around me, brings me towards smiles and warmth… an energetic tenderness… and a respect for these precious gifts we call nature, we call our planet, we call… each other… we call… Earth.
And I get that it is reciprocal and generative.
The earth and all she offers… feeds me, soothes me, cares for me… and caresses me… regardless… and even more so as I allow myself to offer attention, choose to notice and care.
If you stayed this far with me on this tumble into obscure internal meanderings, I am not sure whether thanks covers how I feel about your tenacity and yet it is the closest word and the one that showed up as needing to be said… so trusting that, thanks for landing and wandering along with me here.
P.S.
I have used some abbreviations here that I notice being used around me, like IDK WTF IDKY and then searched online to see how these are to be used, the two words that showed up for me, and caught my attention… were… online and informal.
So, having done the research I’m proud to announce that this online shared and sharing space is formally now… informal 4eva Oomf!
P.P.S the workings out that I made to spark the writing that grew here from these rushed before I forget jottings…
The caressing the environment thing… taking care of something you find useful… agttachment… respect for the work of others… included Huysmans… this whole wishing dish washing today has set me up for todays meditations, prayers, wishes, what else do I call the thing that stays with me through the day and brings me to places I ether haven’t been to before our can’t recall… anyway… wishing and dishwashing and caring and sharing… like this… and being good with the work I do safe to believe others will treat the outcome of my work as useful or thoughtful or at least something they may use… and being good with all the things that I do that together I call a life… against nature has always left me feeling that I relate too easily with the wish to not have to interact with others… and maybe thats where the next days stuff might find some daylight and little space to grow? Who knows, ( IDK )? Officially informal here, now.
Pic from an unexpected spot when I was on my way somewhere a few years ago around this time of year. Relevance TBH IDK.