I've started the Everest task of clearing out my room so I can make space for painting. And making space to breathe and move. One of the most important things we may do is to make space I think, in all aspects of life, in an organisational sense and in the way we carry out our life and daily tasks, in our environment, in our bodies. If there is space we can pay more attention, be more peaceful, less stressed and less restricted. That's the plan. I feel it's so important to be as free as possible from objects and clutter and I'm sure a terribly messy cluttered house is just a mirror of our states of mind, or at least of a side of ourselves.
I was saying to my friend that I'm like one of those people on the telly who have houses so full that they can't move and they have 50 cats and need to get a team of people who really like cleaning to come and help them out of their trap! Due to the great taxidermy disaster of 2011 for example, I have a freezer of dead decomposed and refrozen animals for god sake!! And the problem with finding almost everything beautiful or useful (the only two categories of things one should have in ones house mind you) is that I have entire boxes full of used envelopes, a millions receipts that seem to have some kind of aesthetic value due to their simplicity or the old fashioned greeting and font or the interesting price printed on it?! So many broken things and empty bags and bits of paper and ribbons and safety pins just in case they could be useful at some point. I get this feeling of "why would I keep this?" at the same time as "why would I throw this out?" with nearly every object in the place.
The majority of the mess is almost certainly composed of paper, if only we had just left it all as trees.
I've been re-tracing my whole life through scraps of paper for the last 3 hours. Hundreds of bank statements, student loan documents, notes for all my history of art, history of architecture, classical art lectures and essays. Don't remember a word of it of course. Assessments about biology and chemistry when I thought about 5 years ago I would go and take another degree in science and even got a place at a university down South but never went and do not remember any of those things I was writing about amylase and polymers. Envelopes filled with things from all the trips of been on, when I went to Paris when I was 18 with my first boyfriend C, the scribbled on maps, the tickets for the catacombs. An empty packet of tissues with a little cat on them, I remember a man gave them to me on the subway in London about 5 years ago when I had been staying with an old love, A, and I was so sad to leave him because we had such a turbulent relationship and every time seemed it would be the last so I was crying, I think the man was Japanese, he said "take care of you" and handed me the cute tissues which sent me into a further flood of tears at the sweetness.
Shopping lists of things to get for my Grandmother, which gave such a sad feeling now that she's dead. Documents relating to all the jobs I've ever had, wage slips, training manuals, the daily notes from when I worked at the museum which seem delightfully mundane now though at the time they were terrifyingly mundane, Article 5 - Litter - If you see any litter around the museum, pick it up... Ok, I hadn't thought of that.... Roof terrace lift has not been fixed yet; it is in operation but can't be called at Medieval Church... Radio traffic - Please listen to the radio before you start speaking... Ok... I remember everyone doing that job was so bored that they had all developed great super techniques to curb the boredom, one guy would tear a few pages out of a book at a time and then crumple them up as he read them so there would be no evidence and the book would only exist as each of it's torn pages scrunched up in the bin!
Concert tickets for the Seoul symphony orchestra, St. Petersburg symphony orchestra, tickets from all the black metal shows I went to see about 10 years ago! Programmes for the ballet. Receipts for just about everything I've ever bought, all the money, all those objects give me such a weird feeling. Must not replace them all once they have been recycled, given to charity etc. magazines and papers for all the strange hobbies I've had over the years, everything from philately when I was about 10 years old, to 5 or 10 years ago when I was very interested in ornithology, taxidermy, mycology, repairing books, trying to learn Russian. Teenage loves of horror films, European cinema. I seemed to join societies for just about every one of these subjects! I.D. cards for each year at university and art college, my work as a nursing assistant, the qualifications I did in all sorts of weird stuff like learning to use a brushcutter when I volunteered for the bird reserve. All the stuff I wrote for the ornithological library and gallery when I wrote their press releases for them. Post cards from all the museums in Europe and memories of each of those trips, who I was with, what I saw. Some of these things are definitely worth keeping. Each time I try to tidy it gets easier to throw away the unnecessary things.
If I live a long life all that will only be a fraction so I must must must throw it all out now. I've found things that I've no idea what they are, some strange sparkly dried out little object, I doesn't about half an hour convinced they were slugs who had crawled up the wall and got into my window and then dehydrated and died behind a box of nests, feathers and lichen covered twigs rapidly gathering dust but luckily they were less horrible dried leaves which had fallen from a jade plant. The plan is to ultimately just have plants, books and painting and drawing things. I'm going to take my old guitars to the shop to see if I canal sell them, I just don't play a Jackson dkmg with EMGhz pickups and a floating trem anymore! I just found a huge bag of shells and stones that would have been far more beautiful while wet and shiny on the beach but I couldn't resist collecting none the less. I've definitely become a lot better at appreciating things in their place and not having to covet them all so much anymore. Here is this really strange clock that's like a scary wooden dog with giant eyes which I used to be so terrified of as a little child that I would out it outside my room every night. I used to do that with the story book about a little girl who's baby brother was stolen by goblins and a nice baby out in its place. I wonder what my parents were trying to do to me!
Something that has amazed me are all the letters and cards I've found from friends over the years, so much kindness but it alarmed me in a way too as I worry that I've never done enough in return, how can people have done so many kind things for me I wonder as I read, do I really deserve it.... have I given enough to them? I hope I have, I can make sure to now if. I haven't.
I just found a notebook, the first page a list of words - phylogeny, subterranean environments, morphometric, phenotypic, morphological, fecundity - prolific, poly genesis, phyletic heritage, allometry, pleiotropy, material compensation, mechanically forced, epiphenomenon, non adaptive structures, orthogenetic, phyletic inertia, recapitulatory..... I have no recollection of writing that and no idea what it was about, maybe when I had my idea of studying science? And so it goes on. Good god!
I hope you are all well and have tidied your rooms this weekend ;-) x
