The last day in this apartment this year. One day it would be the last day, period. But I am not there yet. I am just sweeping. Sweeping the dirt that's been colonizing my beautiful wooden floor while I was too busy going through the process called life. I am aware of the colonization, at least sometimes, but I never really stopped and thought about interrupting it. Don't know why. But it's the end of the year, the last day of the year, or decade, and at least today, I should clean up a little bit. Probably not mop.
And it's a strange experience. The process of sweeping. Some intellect is required but still, it's almost meditative. I notice the sweeps, each stroke, and the gratification of moving the colonists into the dust pan. It's my own bedroom. I never really take care of it. Why not? I am not taking care of myself that much, I guess. It reflects on your own behavior towards yourself, someone had told me.
Who was that someone?
Probably one of the people in the pictures on my very dusty dresser. I clean that even less often than I clean the floor, but I see it more often, every morning when I get up to find something to wear. I have noticed the thickening layer of dust over the year, or maybe more than a year.
But then again, I've always noticed the pictures more, if I had the mental energy to notice anything. They are supposedly the most important people in my life, my family, my friends. But then they all have played some dramatic role in my life, which, I suppose, isn't that unexpected; the most important people in your life are the central characters in any drama in your life. Usually.
And so I take the pictures down to clear the top of the dresser, and then I clean it. The gray layer of dust quickly become black streaks on my paper towel moistened with toxic cleaner. And out it goes. Then I turn my attention to the pictures. Their frames are covered with dust too. And one by one I clean while I look and let memories make their usual journey in my head. Where did I take this picture? Where were we? Yes, I remember. How did these people feel then? What were these people doing? Did I notice how they felt? How did I feel?
And how much has changed since that picture or this one. How much we have grown together or apart, and how much I have traveled in my personal journey since sitting with this important person or that at that time. And then I realize that it's the end of the year, a new page is turned even if the story simply continues from the last word of the current page to the first of the next. Chapters start randomly on a given page in my life. There has never been any blank space when one drama ends and the next one begins. And little by little the stories with the people in these pictures come visiting again, like relatives do over the holiday break that marks the end of the year.
There's something satisfying about cleaning these picture frames. The pictures do seem noticeably clearer, the smiles more radiant, and I feel in a metaphorical way I have cleaned something of the past. I have somehow, brightened the past, almost as if I had made some amends. All the pictures were of happy moments, but they remind me of the grander picture of which they are a simply smart part, and it's that grander picture in my head that I am attempting to clean a little.
I place the pictures back on the dresser, but not in the same way they had been sitting for more than a year now. I don't remember how they were arranged before, but it doesn't really matter. I am looking forward to another year, and I am arranging the past in the way I'd like to become in the future. and whatever happens next, I still have these pictures, at least in my head, that I should clean every now and then, at least just so I can take the time to look at them, look at the important parts of this dynamic setting called my life.
