I just watched a movie called THE READER. If you haven’t seen it, go here and watch it.

Did you go? Did you see it? It was good, wasn’t it? Do you remember that scene where Michael’s lover scrubs him as he stands in the bathtub? Did you take note of the method she employed to wash Michael’s body? Her strokes were short, aggressive and possibly painful swipes at his skin. As she scrubbed him, did you get the feeling Michael was clean? I sure did.

That gusto, that persistent attack on the devilish dirt is manifest in my maid. He comes to my home once a week and deals with my piled up mistakes. The ones that set the smoke detectors off. He opens all the windows and takes out the garbage.

These are the things my dear, sweet, evil mother neglected to instill within me. My mother couldn’t wait for me to clean up after myself. She’d tell me to clean my room, and I wouldn’t do it. So, after waiting as long as she possibly could, she’d swoop in and clean my room.

To me, early on, I got it into my head that the clothing and papers scattered across my floor was art. I saw within each piece of clutter the artistic aspect of its place within the available space. The clothes were the best, for at an early age I marveled at the shapes within a sweatshirt’s folds and wrinkles.

I cherished the sock that somehow ended up on a bookshelf, which then became a study of contrasts and shadows. Mother didn’t get it because mother wasn’t an artist. She thought such things shallow.

THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD

A year ago, my space was full of artistic placements of various items of clothing, bowls of the dregs of Top Ramen lunches, several pencils, a dozen plastic bags from the supermarket, socks and shoes, underwear worn long past the standard week, and various parts and parcels of almost finished lunches.

Then, one day, the sore on my foot became infected. I didn’t know it then, but it smelled like decaying flesh. I put off going. The emergency room always takes hours, or at least that had been my experience in times past.

Oddly, when I arrived, the emergency room was empty. The triage nurse said she smelled the rot. She explained, the subtle smell was with me all the time so I got used to it, and therefore it never registered. The pain was enough to get me there. She said they’d probably have to amputate my big toe.