Yes, I am infatuated by the idea of a floor without dust or crumble: I am still. Nothing has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I shut my eyes and all the dust drops dead. I lift my eyes and all is born again. Dreams serve no purpose here unless one tends to live life eyes closed and I have no such intention. Nor should you. For then you miss such lovelies as the poppies in October.
Take a breath and listen to the brag of the dust mites—I am, I am, I am. But you want them to be not. And together we will make them be not. Or we shall die. I always leave open the possibility of death.
There is something demoralizing about watching two dust bunnies fuse into one. It’s like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction—every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it’s really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier. Perhaps the trouble is that we have been inadequate all along, we simply haven’t thought about it.
I fear I have not even begun to fight the dust bunnies at all. Is there no way out of the mind?
You may choose a broom or a vacuum. With the former, beware that the dust bunnies clasp the bristles of the broom as if engaged in a slow dance, not sitting on the brink of death, as I am, and as I wish them to be. The cleaning then becomes two part, sweeping the loose wants into the bin, and prying the dedicated from the threads of the broom and disposing of them by hand. The broom does not give us everything, but perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.
Contrarily, to take the vacuum opens a world of expensive repairs if something should go awry, as things often do in such a world of death and disappointment. Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, sweep it. I talk to myself, but I am empty. And I find myself again, a shell with a Dyson in hand, wondering where I left the charger.
Anyway. It is not just to eliminate the dust, but to scrape their very soul stains from the room. There is a smell, stale, unclean. Dispense with freshener. Feel your lungs inflate with the onrush of Fabreeze—air, mountains, trees, rain. Think, “This is what it is to be happy.” But what is Fabreeze but deception. Place a mask on the face of the devil and he doesn’t cease to exist. If nothing else, he exists more, now with the freedom of invisibility.
Devils and dust binnies, I must get my soul back from you; I am killing my flesh without it. Dying is an art. An art that dust and muck refuse to participate in. I wish to say to you, “we should meet in another life, we shall meet in air, me and you.” But to speak the words is to give you life. Life that I have been so determined to strip from you.