dusting
like ironing should be a pleasant calming thoughtful activity, a rote activity good for the nerves the soul the memory reveries, the sweep of the hand the cloth, the dusting automatic chaos and entropy ahead order and cleanliness behind. But not the way my mother practiced it. Dusting was a vocation a calling a mighty struggle against forces of decay and decline that assaulted us through every crack crevice open window and door, unwiped shoe crumbs escaped from the kitchen, cigarette ash that refused to stay in an ashtray, finding a place to land, to call home, after dancing in a sunbeam tantalizing and taunting. Mom was always at the ready grabbing dust cloth and spray shine from its place of honor in the pantry, rushing forth to do battle, consumed with making the house shine perpetually. We used to joke that after a couple of years of repelling the endless scaling of the ramparts, Mom no longer had to dust, the enemy conceding defeat and refused to enter or land. Still she dusted. I think of this as I work my way around the TV and knickknacks on the table in the corner, practiced, effective, but I am sure not up to my mother’s standards. As my dust gathers in the cloth, I realize that some dust escapes the cloth and become airborne, where I will inevitably inhale some, the enemy absorbed. I do not know the effort, how I will be transformed, or who ultimately is the winner. (after Rita Dove)
about that truth beauty thing
it all seems so stylized, frozen distant unapproachable abstract deceased. Just like the Grecian urn that provides the impetus, frozen, abstract, unvarnished by life, by use, no veneers added, no more nicks and chips gathered through use, from jostling with the world in a kitchen, a pantry or storeroom at wine or oil vendor’s, on a city street hoist on someone's shoulder in Athens, Piraeus, the Hellespont, Ithaca, carried to be refilled or taken to the docks to promote commerce, carry the products that make the world spin. No, this urn is taken out of time, away from purpose, no longer part of the story, speaking only to itself and the random museum visitor, art divorced from reality utility like Aunt Mary's beloved china settings unused in their cloth bags behind more useful items like loaf pans and funnels, as dust free as the crockery on its museum perch. In this context it is so easy to say, beauty/truth truth/beauty all you ned, etc. so simple, so pure, yes/no, 0/1, on/off. But in the real world, where unvarnished truth is hard to come by, where truthfulness is measured by degrees, shades of gray, the simple equation may not apply. Truth may be ugly, hard to grasp, understand, may need nuance, explanation. I cannot hear Pilate ask 'what is beauty?' in the same way he asked Jesus about truth, cannot fathom what Jesus would have said in response.