Monday, December 28, 2009

A Little More About Light

Monday morning and here we are. The light is just damn ethereal this morning. It's the week between Christmas and New Years and we need all the light we can get. Didn't the Mayans have a few days every so many years which were the dead days, needed in order to set the calender they used perfectly accurate? Those Mayans. They had three calenders, every damn one of them more accurate than the one we use. One of them was based on the cycles of Venus and who knows why except that they were curious and observant and brilliant and oh yes, maybe had been visited by aliens.
Who knows?
Mr. Moon took that picture of the observatory at Chichen Itza in 2003 from the lobby of the hotel we were staying in.
I can barely type those words for the disbelief that still rings in my soul- we saw that! That we saw those old stones, gathered and crafted so carefully to watch the stars from, the planets as they whooped and whirled in the cosmos from the Yucatan Peninsula.
I have always found the present day Mayans to be the most humorous and kind people I've ever met. Is it because their ancient priests settled the matters of the heavens so long ago that they can feel comfortable here on earth?
Again.
I do not know.

Here's what I do know:
A very old friend is coming out today. She and I have not visited in each other's homes for at least a decade. She is driving all the way out here to see me and she said if I start cleaning, she's not coming. Well, how would she know? I look around and see with the eyes of someone just entering my yard, my house, and it looks like post-Christmas meltdown chaos. I spent all day Saturday joyfully in the yard, trimming and hauling and tidying although it still looks like winter's brown finger has pointed everywhere. I spent yesterday holding and playing with my grandson. Again, joyfully.

But my house. My shabby, dusty house.
As Petit Fleur so accurately points out- it photographs better than it looks in reality. That's not exactly what she said but it's the truth. I can choose the shots. The pretty stairway, the aprons on the kitchen wall. I can avoid that corners of chaos, the places on the furniture the dogs have peed upon so many times they've taken the finish off.

Well.

Pam swears she won't care. And I know, at heart, she won't. I'm going to make some split-pea soup and a loaf of bread and I'll put a clean tablecloth on the table.
But what is it that makes us want to show our homes in the best light possible? After all these years of women's liberation and knowing that dust will not kill us, why do we still yearn to have those perfectly clean corners, those shining porcelain bathroom fixtures, those stretched-tight bedspreads, those dust-free pianos?

Were the Mayan women house-proud? Did the native-American women who lived here (yes! right here! long before this house was built) despair of every keeping the sandy dirt out of whatever shelter they lived in? Or was it built directly upon the dirt? May told me that in the part of Africa where she stayed once, everyone just threw their trash onto the dirt but that every morning, the women swept their yards and gathered the trash and burned it. People laugh when I talk about sweeping the yard but honey- people here still do that. If we don't have grass, we sweep the yard.

Women and our genes. Why is it that the men were the priests and felt free to study the stars while women, I suspect, always worried about the house and the food and the children?
And thus it still is, as loathe as we are to admit it.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the woman who brought attention to the Everglades and their importance and who wrote about them passionately her entire life said in her autobiography that she had sex once and it was not that great and that because she spent her life without a man or without having children, she had been free to pursue her passion.

Well, good for Marjory and good for our planet that she was free because she did more for our planet than most.

But here I am, a woman with a man and children and dogs and chickens and it's the dead week between Christmas and New Years and my friend is coming out and I am going to tidy a bit and make soup. I hope Pam sees my house with light in her heart and I hope the soup is good and that two old friends can reconnect and let the dust lie where it lies.
I will show her my camellias and the ancient oak trees and my pretty hens who lay me warm eggs of brown and green and blue that nestle in my palm as I carry them from the hen house to the kitchen.

I hope we see each other's eyes and the light coming from our hearts, leaked and channeled from the universe and we, each of us, are priests and priestesses, observing that light from our own vantage point, dust flying up everywhere, but not so much it obscures the starshine, the holy golden and silver molecules which our eyes register but which are hearts understand, take in, give back.

23 comments:

  1. I'm glad to have your words , in this dead week as you call it.
    It's also the 12 days of Christmas , yesterday being a day of celebrating our families.
    Mostly it feels like I already want the routine back. And that I have too many kids .( that was said with love of course :) ).
    My husband is away , and I am eating and drinking and reading and driving kids around and waiting up for them. And if a friend calls to say she is coming over I will have a hissy fit and clean the house way less than in years past. Getting older and wiser I hope.
    Enjoy the visit with food and love and sunshine.
    and my blog isn't in your list, but how awkward, as I don't know if you want it there.

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  2. Deb- Honey- Fixed and done. You're there now. Thanks! And I am enjoying the day already, making soup and trying to create order. Impossible, but it's sweet to try and tidy this house I love at least a little bit.

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  3. Have a wonderful visit and please give Pam my love.

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  4. Jan- I will. And I hear that I may see you tomorrow? Yes? I hope!

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  5. If a friend comes to visit and my house if the reason, she is not a friend. A hundred years from now it wont make any difference who dusted and who didn't. But you are right, we still have that pesky gene that should be vacuumed into oblivion.

    Enjoy your friend and catching up.

    PS: I found my copy of Crazy Heart and be still my own crazy heart: I completely forgot it was the advance reading copy and I have inside even the letter from Bill Shinker about the publication all the way back to June 1987.

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  6. Ms. Allegra- That is so cool! Wow. Are you going to reread it?
    And I agree with you about the pesky gene. If I had a vacuum, I would try and take care of that problem. Could I just sweep it away?

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  7. Ah, that last paragraph.
    Make soup and bread, forget dusting. I spend the day last week getting the house ready for a visit with grasshopper Kathy and I could tell she wouldn't have noticed either way. She didn't even notice the little Christmas tree. I love her for that. And I knew it, but I couldn't help myself. A little sweeping helps our souls I think.
    Have fun with your dear friend. Thanks for giving me something wonderful to read with my morning coffee.
    I'm forcing myself to go to lunch with my brother and Mom before work. This helps me.

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  8. Say hi and give a squeeze for me too!

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  9. Ugh. No. For me, housework-challenged as I am, it's nothing to do with houseproud. It's freind-proud.

    You want to make a nice space for them. Welcome them. Say, relax, sit, talk to me, I made this cake in your honour, this nice space for you. Put milk in a jug. How good to see you, welcome to my home.

    But instead, I'm always hoovering in a towel, saying sorrysorrysorry, it's not that you're not worth it you are, you're so worth it, next time I'll be ready, I didn't fail to get ready because of you, it's not you it's me, just rip open that packet of shop bought bisuits with your teth there, and move the pile of drying underwear out of the way and sit down while I wash a cup - sorrysorrysorry, I really did want things to be nice...

    wv: sonishn. Sunshine?

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  10. This is such a beautiful post and reminds me why ancient traditions and things put me in my proper place -- part of the larger scheme. I wouldn't worry about your house, either, because true friends see your home as if it were a photo anyway, right?

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  11. I just give up and meet my friends at a cozy restaurant. I have no time or energy for mad-cleaning sprees,and just end up feeling resentful for having to do it.

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  12. Bethany- You are a brave woman to go to lunch with your mother and brother if your relationship with your mother and brother is anything like the relationship between me and my mother and one of my brothers. I hope it goes well.

    Mindy- Will do!

    Ms. Bastard- Okay!

    Jo- Exactly. Welcoming and cozy and "Here, sit down. Let me take care of you." And it is so worth it to do that as best we can.

    Elizabeth- I hope so. I wish I had magic fairy dust to sprinkle on people as they walked in which would make them see only the good.

    Rachel- The fact is, I love my house and I love it most when it is at least tidy. It feels good to have it so and what better excuse?

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  13. @ ms moon..

    ha..first of all i love the mayas ..with their smart but cruel society..did you knew they inventet soccer? yes they played it with heads...and when they played games it was common that the looser had to pay it with their lifes...

    anyway...the men and women role..in society..the men rock their crotch and the women clean the house??? i wish it was like that..because everytime i have guests i go all crazy and start cleaning whirling and everything..for example clean behind the fridge as if there would ever someone move my huge fridge aside and say: oh its not clean behind that huge and heavy fucker..gah


    the spam word is howni..so honk if you are howni

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  14. Very nice photos. Makes want to live in Florida much more.

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  15. I use company as an excuse to do what I want - to get my house tip-top shape clean. I *love* a clean house but sometimes do not prioritize it.

    I also *LOVE* sex (more than cleaning even!) AND feel free to pursue my passions. Every damn day I am SO grateful to have been born a woman in THIS time and place. SO GRATEFUL. To be able to make choices - that we should never take for granted.

    I shall have to find her book - I know so little about the Everglades (never been to Florida) and want to learn!

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  16. Danielle- Yes. I knew that about the Maya. I have seen the playing fields. Plus- they invented zero on this side of the world.
    And you, Danielle, are not a cave man. You are evolved. Which probably does not make you any happier, sad to say. Cleaning behind the fridge? Oh my. If I ever come to your house, I will definitely check to see if it is dust-free back there.
    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
    Howni? Is that the southern pronunciation of "horny"?

    Rebecca- Just remember- North Florida is very, very different from Mickey World and Miami World. In fact, we are worlds away.

    Nola- Hmmm. And I wonder how in the world it is that you do not have a husband? You love to clean and you love sex and you make preserves and you are a great cook (I am certain) and yet...
    Hmmmm. Must be that one of your choices is not to have a husband.
    "River of Grass" is probably Ms. Douglas's most famous work.

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  17. Absolutely! Wouldn't know what to do with a man who didn't have another home to go to (just sent a man home with leftovers). In another time, I'd be a harlot mistress. Now, I just get to do whatever I want - yay! :)

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  18. Nola- And how cool is that? You're a unique and wonderful woman and that man is lucky to be sent home with your leftovers.

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  19. It is so true that women, most of us anyways, stress about how our home's look to others. I am worried right now that I will not have time to vacuum and sweep before one of my best friends comes over for dinner. BEST FRIEND. How silly is that? Like she cares?

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.