Cleanliness

I usually post the virtue of the week on Monday, Tuesday at the latest, but since this week has been Cleanliness, and I have quite literally been cleaning everything needed to be cleaned since the first earthquake on September 4th, 2010 wherein we were in the middle of a major move of house, and well, as one might comprehend, nothing has been done since then. Except of course to clean up the primary mess of the February 22nd, 2011 earthquake to keep from walking across shards of glass and pottery, it is Friday now, and still, there is much to clean, but there sure as hell is a big dent in it, thanks to Brother John.


When in a cleaning dilemma, it sure helps to bring in someone fresh to the space, they see through the lens of someone who just sees a mess, not the despair that made it happen. We tackled the garage, or ‘girge’ according to Brother John imitating a Kiwi accent. Brother John has been lost in translation of late, when a ‘skip’ is supplied for ‘dumpster’ and a ‘prawn’ for ‘shrimp’, but Brother John will agree we have been feeding him well, as we throw out what we finally need to throw out in the pursuit of Cleanliness.

Meanwhile, we have been building too, utilizing the many bricks plopped on the side of the road from fallen chimneys, walls, and buildings whose demolition might not have been complete by natural disasters, now bull-dozed without contemplation from many angles, just a ‘bring her down’ attitude that prevails in an unequally ruled world. We still live in a police state here, but as of yet, we can recycle bricks until they discover we have been building something without their permission. So, what are we building?

An outdoor kitchen, with a fireplace, that isn’t allowed either if there are solid walls, but actually acceptable if there are none, and there is no fire ban on. Go figure, there are always loopholes for a lady with an urge for fire, being a ‘fire starter’ is something of a natural lineage that runs deep within me, some primordial urge, grown more urgent when a person feels safer outside than inside a building, like we do in the earthquake territory we now know we have chosen to live in unawares. It’s important to stand beside a fire every once in awhile and contemplate what’s the next move. Especially, when you are done with the Cleanliness routine, not to be mean, but just wondering if Ben Franklin ever cleaned his own dishes?