The triumph of the inanimate object

This morning I had trouble finding
my favourite cup, a green flute with dark spots.  I enjoy its colour, its design and size.  The perfect size for my morning cup of tea.  My husband hates this cup.  He reckons it is inherently unstable
because its base is narrower than its lip.  It can topple too easily in his view. 
            My
husband has threatened to throw the cup away before and when I could not at
first find it this morning I asked him if he had.  He was insulted that I should accuse him of such a thing,
not that my question had reached the stage of accusation but perhaps it was
implied.
            I
found the cup eventually where I had left it the night before, having taken an
unusually late cup of tea in my study.
            It
is not unusual  for me to take a
fancy to a particular cup, and when at home, to insist that this cup is the
only one from which I will drink. 
The cup does not get into the dishwasher. I cannot part with it for long
enough between washes. I rinse it out between drinks and put it out onto the
dish rack to dry, which is another reason why my husband hates my green spotted
cup.  It is always in view.  When not in use the cup sits on the
dish rack and from time threatens to topple, especially when my husband tries
to get access to the sink. 
            He
needs the sink clear to wash the spinach and the potatoes.  He needs the sink dry when he leaves
his future bread in a bowl, yeast and flour together, eager to rise above warm
water.  He needs the sink to wash
his hands. 
            The
cup all but winks at him in triumph. 
Here I am, your wife’s green spotted cup and you cannot get rid of me
even if you want to. 
            If
only I were like my husband, and drank my tea out of the sturdy cups he
prefers, the ones shaped at the base much as they are shaped at the top.  We have several such cups that fit this
description.  Then I might not need
a favourite cup.  I could settle
for one of many and form no strict attachment to any. 
            My
cups once used can visit the dish washer. 
They need not be left out to dry on the dish rack. They need not gloat
over their preferred status and leave my husband in a sore and sorry state of
mind, as if his wife were unfaithful. 
And she need not worry that her husband might seek to destroy his rival,
her beloved cup.

Clutter, clots, clogs and chaos.

The other day I read about a
workshop that explores sleep disorders and I toyed with going, not because I
have a sleep disorder but because I am curious about what it is that causes
some people to suffer sleeplessness hour after hour.
I decided against going.  For one thing I do not have the time to
spare, nor do I know the orientation of those who would be taking such a
workshop.  I fear too much emphasis
on behaviour and the superficial. 
Such an approach would drive me potty.  
Worst of although I fear attendance at such a workshop might
put the mozz on me and suddenly if I allowed myself to think too long about it I, too, might begin to suffer from insomnia. 
Sleep is such a fragile thing.  It comes in waves.
We looked after our grandsons last
night while their parents went out to dinner and drinks for one of our other
daughters’ birthdays, the first outing my daughter and her husband have been
alone together since the youngest was born eleven months ago.  It comes into my mind now thinking
about sleep.
Around 9.30 pm I pushed my nearly
one year old grandson’s pram up and down the corridor willing him off to sleep.  Up and down the corridor I pushed his
pram but he was determined to stay awake. 
Eventually he could not keep his eyes open and dropped off.   The pram’s movement was
irresistible.
My mind does not want to work this
morning.  I tell it to think about
sleep but it is too cluttered with thoughts of the day ahead.  All the jobs I have to deal with,
including a visit to my mother early, because we are having a dinner for the
same daughter’s birthday – multiple celebrations for a birthday that fell last
week while she was away.
 See how cryptic I can be, avoiding the use of personal names
so as to avoid identifying those who might not want to be identified. 
My heads a clutter with ideas, and
prohibitions.  The other day I
heard about the three Cs of anxiety, ‘clutter, clots and clogs’.  You can read about it here.  They relate  to hoarding, but my interest is in its less pathological manifestations,
as something I can get into not only literally – if you could see the junk room in
my house you’d know what I mean – but metaphorically, in my head.
The idea is that a degree of
clutter is part of the stuff of life. We need stuff to live and in a family of
several folks, young and old, you will find lots of things, in use, put aside, open
and available at the same time.  
The kitchen table is covered in condiments, open school books,
unfinished sewing, shopping lists and more besides.  A lived-in house. 
On the other hand, there are areas where the stuff gets piled and is not used
regularly nor removed, though it could be if someone put their mind to it. 
An example of clutter that borders on chaos.  I’m the one in white.  
The
stuff that stays for months on end becomes a clot.   And finally, there are the areas in the house that can
spread one clot after another into a serious clog, serious to the point that
activities must be curtailed because there is no room to move. 
You can’t even open your doors for
the stuff.  You can’t use your
table or bench top for the stuff.  In other words you can’t live. 
I once visited the house of the
artist Mirka Mora and her place was like that, only her stuff was mostly art
works, great gorgeous canvases and stuff she used as still life, dolls and taxidermic
animals and post cards.  An amazing
place and some how it did not offend me in the same way a really cluttered,
clotted, clogged place might. 
When I was young and worked as a
social worker I went from time to time to visit an elderly man who lived alone
in Carnegie. The local doctor had referred him because he was concerned about
this man’s life style.  The man
refused to throw anything out.  The
hall way was lined with newspapers in piles and empty tin cans.  There was not an open space in the entire
house.  I could only interview him
in his bedroom and I was reluctant to sit on the one chair available beside his
bed because it too was piled with newspapers. 
He must be dead by now, and I
wonder what happened to his stuff. 
Did it wind up somewhere on a tip, the useful and the junk all blended
together into one unusable mass?