On groundlessness and letting go of things

Good morning. Get this: it’s getting light earlier, so I kinda feel a desire to get up earlier, so that I can write in the dark again. It feels like the day has already started. And I’m not quite ready for that yet.

I am reminded that things change, and here I am, trying to nail them down the the floor so they don’t.

Another word for this week is groundlessness. We keep trying to get the ground beneath our feet, to find some firm patch of earth to stand on… but that perhaps that is not the way it works.

Perhaps we must surrender to the groundlessness of it all. Apparently Pema Chodron talks about this in her book Things Fall Apart.

I can’t seem to find my copy.

Ha.

Groundlessness.

Last summer, the first act that began this rally that I’m currently on, this tear, this rising, is that I folded my underwear and my socks neatly and lined them up in a drawer. M and I were in Montana for a month, hanging out and being in Montana, and I happened across the Marie Kondo book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. It felt familiar; I was dimly aware that it was a NYT bestseller or was getting some press or something. Anyway, I bought the book, and was fascinated by this very Japanese phenomenon of decluttering and cleaning. It was some housekeeping porn, like Real Simple, that plays on our fantasy of everything being in order, put away and simple.

It feels illicit to me in the same way. On the one hand, I love simple and uncluttered and minimalist. But on the other, I don’t trust the fetishization of organization. I am suspicious of encouraging women to “get everything in order” — it reminds me of sexism, and how women are systematically routed into being the angel in the house. Glory, that’s a hopelessly broad proclamation. But gotta let that out of the box and into the light of day as well.

Gotta express everything.

Yah, so I am suspicious of women with super clean homes. It freaks me out. Those are the serial killers, even if they are killing themselves. Funny - Lady MacBeth is hanging out over here. Out out you damned spot. What, will these hands ne’er be clean?

Ha! My associations are hilarious. Women with clean houses are hiding something. Like talking their husbands into murdering the king. Fan-fucking-tastic.

So ANYWAY… that’s all really about me, by the way. When I’m super focused on cleaning my house, it’s because I’ve got something churning below the surface that I’m trying to tidy up.

So ANYWAY… I started folding my underwear and socks and lining them up in a drawer, and that’s when things started to change. Even though this is such a white lady thing to do — as instructed by a Japanese lady — the whole thing, I get it. Nonetheless. She also has this thing about clearing all the stuff out of your house. Which I totally love. And it was time.

So you hold an object in your hands and ask yourself “does this spark joy?” —

— Right now there is a voice SCREAMING in my head that children are dying, the world is going to hell in a hand basket, we’ve got a prison industrial complex that is making money systematically stripping black men of their freedom, and crazy people running for leader of the free world, and I’m talking about sorting the objects in my house?! —

— and if it doesn’t, out it goes.

I cleared 6 maybe 8 big bags of objects, clothes, and books this way.

M panicked when I started sorting through my books. He told me I was nuts. Kondo’s argument was that people have all these books they intend to read, but never do. And if you ever want a book again, you can go check it out of the library or or buy it again. This made sense to me. Also, I am keenly aware that the more stuff you have, the more that stuff owns you. I don’t want to be weighed down by a lot of things.

I love things, but I’m pretty much at the place where I want it to be beautiful, well-designed, and something we use or that brings us joy… or I don’t want it at all.

I have perhaps over-purged. I have gone to our bookshelves a few times these past months, looking for a passage or an idea in a book, and not finding the book.

Perhaps this happened with the Pema Chodron book. But also? I remember giving that book to an old boyfriend after we broke up. Or he gave it to me, I can’t remember. So maybe I gave him my copy. I know I really loved that book awhile back, and am pretty sure I’ve given it to some friends as well.

Groundlessness.

Stuff.

Letting things go.

Side bar: I’ve had two people tell me they “live by their gut” this week. That they sense things before they know what they are sensing, and they know things before they often have words for it. That resonated. It got me curious if maybe I live by my gut, too. Meaning, I go where my intuition tells me. Once you realize that this is how you are living your life, this is how you make decisions, there’s no going back.

Well, I’m being dramatic. I go back all the time. I think I have to make pros and cons lists about decisions, instead of checking with my gut. But once you realize that you have that access to that knowing, it’s just a dance of sometimes forgetting and then remembering that that is available to you. To all of us. Gosh, I think of that quote from George W. about how he doesn’t need facts, he knows things in his gut. Which has not worked out well for us as a nation. So there is a balance, I guess. Living by your gut as a way to guide your personal decisions… but as soon as it becomes political or social, we need to temper that — or combine that — with facts and arguments and discussion and influence and a different standard for deciding what to do.

Hmm. My mind feels kinda flaccid and out of shape.

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