Good and Messy

My house is a fekkin disaster area. Pretty much all the time.

And apparently I like it that way, because if I didn’t I would do something about it. I have a lot of interests, and not quite enough house for them all to fit into nicely. It has ever been thus. Michael also has a lot of interests, hobbies and collections. We get in each other’s way quite a bit. Often, we are inspired to use up massive amounts of space with our respective hobbies at the same time, which, it seems, is going to be an ongoing test of our relationship. We also both tend to dive into something with both feet up to the eyebrows and then something lifey happens and we have to dive back out again leaving enough detritus strewn around to give your average toddler a run for her money. Sometimes I long for a house with open space and tables with nothing on but lamps and little coasters. Maybe a framed photograph.

How I long to be able to walk from here to there without having to turn sideways and suck my stomach in. 

But that will probably never happen. Probably? Okay. Right. It’s me. I will fill up every square foot of space I possibly can with something creative – musical and sound therapy instruments; journals and creative workbooks; stacks of paper containing poems, lyrics, short stories and half-written novels; threads, skeins of yarn (usually attached to unfinished projects), buttons, beads, scraps of fabric, safety pins and yes, the occasional straight pin, lurking in the carpet, waiting to strike; books and books and more books; bottles of elixirs and essential oils and partially burnt candles; any number of Tarot decks; microphones and a recording interface – and this is just a snap shot of my living room today. No, I’m not kidding. It seriously would not matter how much space I had or how many workbenches I had or how many cabinets, trunks, organizers, tubs or shelving units I had, my creative juices would be spilling all over the workbenches, splashing all over the walls, and be putting a very nasty stain in the rug.

I am the crazy old alchemist in the chaotic workshop. I am the bookshop owner with more piles of books than shelving. But I know exactly where every goddamn molecule of it all is and when I do get around to finishing something it’s fucking gorgeous and if you are suffering you’re welcome in my healing room which is the cleanest and neatest room in the entire damn house.

It’s an indication of a human so engaged in living she can’t be bothered with conventions like housework.

My mother use to get intensely frustrated with my messiness. She would throw up her hands and say, “Why do you have to be such a rebel?” She said it like it was a bad thing. I know better now. Housework? If I have to. When it gets, you know, bad. When the date I wrote in the dust is just barely visible through the new dust. The kitchen is clean–messy, but sanitary to a peculiarity. Michael and I are both just germophobic enough to make sure of that.

But I know a few people with those houses you can walk through without hurting yourself, and those houses seem kind of sad to me. Like they aren’t really, really lived in. Like nobody gets up at 2 in the morning because they just had an idea for a song or a story; like nobody spends a whole week altering a pattern and piecing fabric together in order to cut it apart and sew in together in a different way until it becomes something else.

Like nobody has ever unintentionally set anything on fire in them.

I mean, come on.

My mother’s ashes are in a temple jar up on the shelf above the cabinets in my kitchen. A really nice one, hand thrown by a very good potter. Every once in a while I can feel her shaking her head and stewing over the mess. Not that she didn’t have her hobbies; she just managed to keep them contained somehow. And maybe she didn’t have quite as many as I have. An artist friend nicknamed me Renaissance, but even he was shocked to realize that I am in the middle of a nearly infinite number of creative projects all at the same time. There was a special branch of Chaos math created to explain how it all manages to exist in one space without turning into a black hole.

I vacillate wildly between guilt and pride, but I have finally come to understand that guilt is inappropriate. My house is a mess because I am creating ravenously and because fun is often messy and because the more I create the more the muses visit, and keeping up with them is the best full time job ever. Besides, I love visiting the houses of people who live in the chaotic madness of creative mirth and don’t give a shit whether you approve or not. I love looking at their work, and seeing their process so intimately. It’s enlightening, enlivening, fascinating, and always an adventure. Why wouldn’t I want to give others that experience?

So come on over, the mess is in rare form today, you’ll love it. I’m sure I can find a surface for you to perch on.

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