Tag Archives: Guy Davis

Does this Clutter make my Butt look Big?

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Things sneak into the closets of my mind …

Your house is your home only when you feel you have jurisdiction over the space. Joan Kron

Every year I am challenged to declutter and this year is no exception, and I have found that one of the best ways to avoid doing and to just talk about doing, is to do online research on the topic, and thus further avoid doing.

January is a busy month for donations at the second hand clothing store where I spend Tues afternoons. People are cleaning out closets. Out with the old and in with the new … and this is the time of year to question why I hang on to some unused items. (But I paid good money for it—and I know I might need it, IMG_1371someday.) While discussing with a friend about the stuff that collects so quickly, she hauled out Peter Walsh’s book, which I interpreted as a divine sign. (Note to self—she is organized and can find items immediately.) And No the clutter does not make my butt look fat, but it does make me feel heavy in spirit. While I have accepted that I will never be a Good Housekeeping poster child, a cluttered space carries a feeling of chaos, and  I prefer a sense of calm in my home. And my calm is disrupted by my clutter. When I have trouble finding things, I know it’s time to re-organize. Most of my friends maintain their homes well, but I am acquainted with a range of house keeping habits, from one that vacuums three times a day, to a spinster librarian, with cats and cat food dishes located in bulk around her small house, to a dining room table that has not seen food for years, because it is covered with stuff. Twenty-one is the number of Srabble games she owns—just in case the church might ever hold a scrabble tournament. (Does no one else own scrabble?) Everyone of us has our own reason for clinging to unneeded items, and lately my reasoning has come into question.

MIT finds a correlation between smarts and messiness, but it’s MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and the writer went on to suggest messy-desked people might be skewing the results in their favour. Anyways, they say that “Messiness is often associated with artistic, creative and scientific or mathematical genius, spontaneity, but also with carelessness, eccentricity, madness and unreliability.”

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Cleanliness was next to Godliness in my childhood days … my sisters and I rushed through the Saturday morning chores so we could watch Dick Clark’s American Bandstand at noon. An automatic association for me is to clean and then celebrate with dance, not unlike a Guy Davis blues song —his line goes,  had some old shoes on, got new shoes now, and I feel like dancing …. thinking old thoughts, got some new thoughts now, and I feel like dancing … Yes, decluttering the closet and the mind leads to dancing and an increased mood of feel good.

An immaculate home (or conception) has never been part of my story, but the closets have become slightly more organized and I feel like dancing.

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Deadheading

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The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.
Emily Dickinson

Deadheading begins with the head?
Earl Grey tea warms as I sit cozy on my balcony, Sarah Ban Breathnach’s book,IMG_5586 Simple Abundance, invigorates as hardy petunia’s smile at me, potted in shades of purple, pink, and white. I reach out to pick off the done blossoms. Sarah writes about her search for wholeness in the everyday epiphanies, the mystical in the mundane. This day she speaks of changing our clothes, our style, in order to keep the creativity alive. Not that out of date clothes are the factor, but the idea to allow the inner authentic self, to be expressed. Letting the inner child out is not a new concept, but is shed like a garment outgrown, in my need to be responsible, frugal, productive. A continuous mini-war goes on inside my head, how much I do for my own self nurturing … versus the belief that it is selfish to do so. “Selfish” is a very bad word in religious circles, it carries heavy judgment … But its judgement has come into question for me.
Many times I quote a favourite fridge magnet—Take my Advice I’m not Using It … at times it comes back to bite me. I do recognize the importance of others taking care of themselves, while hesitant to apply that to myself for fear of being “selfish.” It has been a continual balancing act … lately I’ve come to think of it less in terms of a rigid balance scale, and more as an ever moving line, a wave, a slow dance that responds to the music of life. Why am I trying to contain myself when I see all around me evidence that the creator is abundantly lavish in creativity, in beauty, in breaking His own rules.
The dried blossoms drop to the floor, are picked up by the wind, and carried away.

I see beauty and music as universal soul therapists. Fifty shades of sunsets clamour for attention. A week ago my sister came to visit; as I saw the sky IMG_6065change colours I said “We need to go right now!” After a quick drive to a higher ridge, we inhaled the the majestic mountain background, with ominous thunderheads to the south, a phenomenal lightning show, ecstatic, electric beauty that was available for all to see, but we were alone in the viewing.
Sometimes we need to go now, or we miss the moment.

Last weekend, sisters joined under and over the rain tarp as showers and sunshine competed, in a Rocky Mountain setting, while the Canmore Folk Festival provided music to set toes a tapping, and bodies swaying. It was a deadheading of the soul.
Words sung by Blues singer Guy Davis still ring in my ears “Had my old shoes on, got new shoes now, had my old clothes on, I got new clothes now and I feel like dancing.” The power house lines for me: “Was thinking my old thoughts, well I’m thinking some new thoughts now, and I feel like dancing.”
Warning—Deadheading leads to dancing.

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Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.
Isak Dinesen