The Revenge Of The Slime Monster

The 'humour' (or 'humor') component of my category cloud has been under a bit of strain recently with all this serious stuff, so I thought it was time for one of our occasional slices of domestic reportage, which are usually good for a snigger or two at my expense.

And here at The Secret Of Life HQ, we're preparing to up sticks and move in the next few months, something which will involve some strategic smearing of paint and brushing of dust under rugs in an effort to make the present abode more saleable, all of which I'm going to find very challenging.

I don't know why but I don't get on with tidiness. I've nothing against it, you understand, it's just that it doesn't come very easily to me. Everywhere I go, I seem to amass a great mess of magazines, unopened mail, bottles of water, mugs of coffee, portable radios, clocks, keys, CDs, bags, and jumpers, all congealed together in an amorphous gloopy mess, which would take a month and a half to separate out, dust, degloop, and file away in appropriate places - always assuming the will was there to do so.

Which it usually isn't.

Chris calls it my 'trail of slime', but she only says that to try to shame me into clearing it up, and she ought to have realized by now that all such attempts to manipulate me are futile. I do occasionally tidy things up, but only when I've tripped over one cup of coffee too many or searched too long to try to find my spectacles in the midst of a pile of mail order catalogs, apple cores, and pending correspondence. I would tidy up more often, I honestly would, but experience has taught me that it only goes and gets itself all untidy again. Entropy rules, so we might as well just admit it.

One Christmas, Chris bought me a 'clothes valet', a weird kind of freestanding coat-hanger, over which I would drape the clothes I'd worn that day when I went to bed - as opposed to slinging them over the banister rail or laying them out on the floor ('like dead animals' as one of my previous girlfriends described this peculiar habit of mine). Then the next day, when my mind was more alert, I would calculate how many days or weeks I'd worn them and whether it was more appropriate to wear them again or sling them into the laundry basket lest they crawl there of their own accord.

So all night, the clothes valet would stand there at the foot of the bed, wearing my habitual jumper and jeans, looking like the spectre of someone who bore an uncanny resemblance to me, looming threateningly out of the darkness when I woke from fitful dreams and greeting me in the morning like some sort of admonishing scarecrow of doom, its jumper askew and its flies undone, a bitter reminder of the disheveled state into which I had descended.

After a while, entropy got to the clothes valet as well. Its rods and wires began to bend under the weight of too many layers of winter clothes and thick-knit crew-neck jumpers, and it took to collapsing spontaneously in the middle of the night, waking us up in a feverish clatter of poles, springs, and ruptured gussets, and requiring careful reconstruction the following morning. Eventually, even Chris had to accept that the experiment had not been a success: that the clothes valet was now contributing to the general clutterdom of the household instead of being an ally against it. I was therefore given permission to take the thing to the tip, where I cheerfully flung it into the skip and left it there to its fate, spreadeagled amongst the mattresses, curtains, and contiboard shelving, looking like a broken robot from a nineteen-fifties science fiction movie.

According to Nick Roach (in his CD, Dealing with Life, Living with Enlightenment), we are attracted to our partners because they reflect back to us parts of ourselves which we haven't yet recognized. We therefore feel more whole, more fully ourselves, when we are around them. And indeed it is true that I see things in Chris which I would like to see in myself. I would like to be more obviously 'a people person', as chatty, gregarious and easy in company as she is - and part of me, yes, would like to be tidy too. I would like to be able to put things away to one side in such a way that I instinctively stack them in tidy, agreeable piles, from which they may be readily accessed whenever I need them, instead of finding that they somehow stray to a formless, mouldering heap where they slowly fester and rot.

Chris, on the other hand, is apparently drawn to a part of her she has yet to discover which is just as untidy as I am. Her state of spiritual development is such that she doesn't yet understand why this should be - and, to be honest, neither do I, but I can only rejoice that she needs to be here at my side with me and my mess.

(Click here to see ongoing discussions on previous posts: How To Deal With Difficult Emotions; Thinking Outside The Illusion.)

Comments

[Sunflower Optimism]

Was I ever laughing with this one, being a "trail of slime" person myself. Some days I yell at my family when they bring the mail in. Here I am drowning in paperwork - and they insist on bringing more in!

Your Chris is a good soul, as is my beloved, the neatnik. Good luck with the move.

[Sham]

Hi,
I can very well relate to you when you say"I don't know why but I don't get on with tidiness" .
For me too, as long as I can get my work done I don't really care too much about tidiness!

Nice post. Wish you all the best on your strategic smearing of paint ;-) and more!

Sham

[Mr Zip]

An MIT study a few years ago showed that an untidy desk was a sign of a creative mind. Think how creative a whole house of untidiness must be. I work hard at demonstrating my creativity in just this way.

[Battlerocker]

That's a good line. From now on, when people criticize my mess, I will simply say that they must be attracted to me. It's got to be an improvement on &%*# off!

[Templar]

I have a theory that clothes feel sad and lonely when hung in a wardrobe and the like...I say...throw them in a pile on the floor and watch the ensuing orgy.

[Secret Simon]

Thanks for all your comments and welcome to Sham! It's nice to know that so many of my readers are as messy as I am.

Sunflower - The mention of your 'neatnik' reminds me of a guy I knew who was widely known as 'Attila the Tidy'. An example of his behaviour was haranguing house-guests who'd used the wash basin if they hadn't hung the plughole chain across the tap in the specified manner. (Those readers who knew me in my previous incarnation as a 'fanzine writer' may recognize who I'm talking about here...)

Sham and Mr Zip - I think we are one on this. I always find that the more creatively productive I've been, the greater the mess afterwards.

Battlerocker - I think you've come up with a genuinely original chat-up line there...

Templar - You let them have an orgy? You clearly a) are very kind to your clothes and b) have a vivid imagination.

[Desiree]

I'm still laughing about the the ending of this post! I can so relate I'm so messy and disorganized, always have been always will be and yet I'm drawn to neat freaks. Though maybe I'm just looking for someone to clean up after me LOL. Seriously I've believed that about the people we are attracted to for a long time. We choose those who have mastered what we haven't, to learn from them and come into balance. We then essentially balance one another hence the coming together as one.

PS I think it's common for writers and other creative people to be messy.

[domestic_slackstress]

My husband puts up with all my clutter piles. He has for years. He knows me well and accepts all my varied idiosynchrasies (spelling?). I wish I were as calm and patient with his shortcomings as he is with mine. I'm uptight and very negative. He's positive and upbeat. We compliment each other. Thanks for making me think about and better appreciate his tolerance and our couple compatability tonight. Great post.

[The Accidental Blogger]

I am a neat freak and guilty of trails of slime, so is it any wonder I can't find anyone as great as me who'll put up with me?

[Secret Simon]

Thanks for these comments and welcome domestic slackstress - though it does seem rather impolite to call you that! These responses are tending to support Desiree's theory that creative people tend to be untidy. So far we've heard from eight bloggers: seven self-confessed, er, for want of a better word - slobs and one (Accidental Blogger) who seems to sit on the fence. (Though if you were really a neat freak, AB, I think you'd have done tidied up those Christmas lights you've been writing about on your blog.) Is there anyone out there who wants to confess to being genuinely tidy?

[Secret Simon]

I guess not. So that clinches it then: we creative types are all untidy. I'll just click 'post' and that'll wrap up this thread. Now where did I put the mouse?

[Pines]

This truly is funny. My husband is pretty much a slime monster himself. If he sees a surface (say a counter top, a table, a chair, the floor) with nothing on it, its his duty to make sure he fills that space up. I think its a man thing LOL.

[Secret Simon]

Glad you liked it, Pines! But it just goes to show - doesn't it? - that we men can multi-task after all. Whatever we're doing, we can always make a mess at the same time...