There’s nothing like returning from an extended holiday to find the house just as you left it; the flowerpots in shambles, cat poo in the backyard, half-peeled ah long posters on every square inch of the gate. Inside, weird smells from the kitchen, frogs hiding in the bathroom (how do they get in?) and the usual layer of disintegrated matter on everything. Ah, the familiarity and comfort of home.
Then there is the ritual spring cleaning, which is very annoying for me because after a sweep of the premises there is always one little corner that I’d have missed, and I’ll be torn between
- doing one more round or
- leaving it alone,
and if I choose Life-Unchanging Decision no. 1 there’ll always be a spot I’d miss, mapping me back to the original problem- yet if I choose Life-Unchanging Decision no. 2, that little neurotic part of my brain will bug me like a pesky unswattable fly, weighing me down with an overwhelming feeling of Unfinished Business, and in the end I’d STILL go back to L-UD no.1, which should now probably be called Inescapable Fate no. 0.
This is why I hate doing chores.
Speaking of dust, I always thought it blew in from outside/natural shedding of dead skin cells/uncontrolled procreation of dust bunnies. But! Why do you get it even in places with no air flow/no human activity? Where do dust bunnies come from in the first place? So! I have thought long and hard over this matter, and the answer is Einstein. See, one of the side-effects of E=mc² is everything loses a bit of mass when it moves. Or something like that. (There's a lot of theorizing and equations and thingy, but they give me a headache so I won't type it down here.) In any case it just shows that dust is here to stay because the Earth has been revolving since time immemorial, and unless it stops we will never be rid of this dirty substance! Argh..
While I was scraping lizard gunk out of the mugs in our kitchen, Daniel popped in and told me there was a cockroach hiding under the sink, after which I was completely spooked, jumping at every little movement and going whoa! oh. at cicaks - yet no sign of the skittering critter.
Just so you know, I abhor cockroaches.
After that whole episode, it should be clear that such a reaction was completely pointless. Yet it is a bit like philosophy really. You get all agitated over it only to realize afterwards that all you managed to do is get worn out and all wet. In the end, it’s not about whether nihilism/dualism/polytheism/whatever is true or not. It’s how you decide to react to it. Of course, knowing me I’ll probably come back to philosophy armed with a can of Mortein. Because I just can’t leave this alone.
At this juncture I should probably say Sorry for the lack of posts recently - but I know my blog readership and have already apologised to both - so I won't. Instead, here's one of those trying-to-be-artsy-and-almost-succeeding-but-not-quite-pictures:
Just a fraction of the boring holiday photo deluge which will be up within 5 - Don't touch that X!
