There are days when I want to do a lot. I look around and want to get rid of the trash that seems to grow exponential around here. But that leads to sorting a bit of the clutter that is mingled in with the trash. Which leads to thoughts about the stuff left over from my vast eBay Empire, that is vast now only in the amount of crap I have that didn’t get any bids. Which, eventually, leads to the floor which might need a bit of vacuuming or maybe just a big pile of stuff that I am not really sure what to do with. Also amid all these relics are a few hundred photos and negatives and various bits of stuff that I think of as useful for My Art. More books, only these are all stacked in teetering towers near the desk where I can reach out and grab one if the mood strikes me to fiddle around with a new style.
So, as all writers are really good at avoidance, I am here blogging instead of attacking the seemingly impossible task of sorting and tossing and making sense of my life.
I have often thought that the problem is deeply involved with cohabitation, this despite the fact that I was a slob while I was still at home and my half of the room I shared with my brother was a mess while his was neat as a pin. Still, I think the trouble is in large part that the wife and I are both Master Clutter Creators. If there was an Olympic event, well, we might well win something. I know there is some show 
that looks for the messiest house in America and the like, but I am not really proud of this mess. Just a bit baffled as to how to fight it.
There is a show called Clean Sweep, which is a really cool show and I am sure it doesn’t work, not even a little bit, in the long run. They go into a house, haul everything out onto the lawn and tell the slobs they can have one item each and they have to sell or toss the rest. Ok, it isn’t quite that bad, but it is close. So they sell all their junk and make 250 dollars, which I suppose helps to make them realize it was JUNK if they can only make 250 dollars selling it. They then put the stuff that didn’t sell with the trash and the house is clean and neat-roll credits.
The show that I would like to see is Clean Sweep-Six Months later, maybe even Six Weeks later. Where our heroes are again hip deep in useless infomercial products and empty pizza boxes. Clutter is not something that is cured by emptiness, it is something that is encouraged by emptiness. In my own humble experience, if I spend the day cleaning, say, the living room. The wife will come in and bring bags of stuff she has bought and set every last one of them in the formerly clean living room. I am sad to say that I tend to do the same thing myself. Of course, part of the reason for this would be that all the stuff that used to be in the living room is now in every other room, thus leaving no space anywhere.
We can trace this wonderful habit of collecting trash and calling it art back to rich people from every era of history. Citizen Kane springs to mind here. But it is really those old standbys the Victorians that brought clutter to a high art form. Look at just about any photo and you will see dozens of knick-knack shelves, and each and every shelve is covered with knick-knacks. These people were nuts. They had special dishes for celery and special forks for oysters and drawers full of gadgets that the Oracles of Delphi couldn’t explain.
Which brings us back to today. It is cloudy out and the room is dark except for the glow of the computer screen. Everything is in shadow and doesn’t look as bad as it did just a little bit ago. Maybe if I just go out and buy a bunch of 40 watt bulbs, the whole place will look better.
Hmm, I think I already bought a bunch of 40 watt bulbs, I wonder what I did with them?
