I don’t have either. No Zen. No chill. What I do have is clutter, everywhere, all the time.
It appears around me, I don’t even really know how.
Cleanliness is next to Godliness. I appear to be a child of purgatory.
I spend a Saturday going to that holiest of holy place: The Container Store. My office closet is in a derelict state that would make even the calmest monk gnash their teeth. It is the source of chaos in my life and it must be tamed. I pick and choose the weapons of mass construction. I take too much. The things that I pack into the back of my SUV will not fit into my closet alone, let alone with all of the chaotic detritus already there. It is okay, I convince myself. I will keep the receipt and return what doesn’t work. I tithe. I leave.
Three months later, after tripping over the pile of containers for the thirty-ninth time as I enter my office I realize I must begin. It is a Tuesday. I must wait.
Three Sundays later, it finally happens.
I put on music. I turn off my phone. I set about correctly the insanity of this office closet. It is Bedlam inside, and the patients are unused office supplies, unread books, papers and receipts and invoices of services long since rendered, tchotchkes, oh the tchotchkes, so many fucking tchotchkes. I rip out the old set of shelves, dusty and insufficient for my purposes. I am not just fixing this closet. I am fixing my life. I am attaining Nirvana.
It takes me all day. It is dark when I am done. But it is done. I can feel it.
I did it.
My closet is in order.
And so is my life.
In the next few weeks I float on a cloud. Everything is perfect. Everything has been fixed. My gutters? No longer clogged. My check engine light? Like it was never on. My hair falls perfectly and my houseplants stay watered and people stare at me as they pass me on the street. They can tell. They wish it for themselves. When people ask at work I toss a hand in the air to indicate it was nothing (even though it was everything). I tell me they can do it, too, it’s really not that hard once you set your mind to it. But I make sure my tone tells them that, in fact, it is hard, so hard only I could ever pull it off and I really don’t think they can do it.
I have heard that tone plenty.
My friends, my coworkers, even people on the subway, they all try to get close to me. To touch me without noticing. They want that holy spirit to rub off on them. To get a little piece, just enough to fix their own closets. I see others like myself. Perfect closets, perfect minds. We give each other little nods as we pass, secure in our holiness.
Pride goeth before destruction and all that.
It takes three weeks and five days for it all to fall apart. I open my perfect office closet and take a stapler from its designated spot in its designated bin. I staple as I walk back to my desk and absently leave the stapler on the edge, almost ready to fall.
It has begun again.
I can pretend I have Zen for a while. I can fake it. I cannot make it. The closet slowly falls apart as I do not put things back where they are supposed to be. Things clutter up and my eyes skip over them, betraying me. I am, always, thinking of something else.
I don’t notice my fall from grace until I trip over a pile of books. Books that should be on a shelf. A specific shelf I know exactly. A shelf currently covered with the scissors, the stapler, the paper receipt from the mechanic, and a little figurine shaped like a cow. All of these things have proper places, too, but there other things there, and so on, and so forth.
My life crumbled around me and I didn’t even notice.
The next day my hair falls flat and my check engine light comes back on and all my houseplants die. It’s over. I was in the sun, but I flew too close. I sit miserably on the subway, not making eye contact. Everyone is squished on the other end of the car. My vibes are no longer desirable.
I go home. I try to make an easy one pan, five ingredient chicken dish and it turns into a Stouffer’s French Bread Pizza in front of my eyes. I eat it in the kitchen next to the pile of paint cans I bought two weeks ago, the walls still lined in painters tape.
I will never belong to higher order.
High Urban Fantasy Jazz 