Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin:
The Attributes of the Arts
and the Rewards Which Are Accorded Them (1766)

" … poor but honest penmanship …"

My desk belies my self-conception as a tidy person. Perhaps I once was neat, but an honest appraisal would conclude that I am no longer well-ordered. My desk holds the residue of innumerable works in progress, some of which I finished. I've always struggled with creating permanent records. I maintain no files, just piles that continue accumulating. To put anything "away" seems the equivalent of losing it.

With the death of a dear friend last month, I've started wondering what sort of legacy I'll leave. It's hard enough for the survivors to cope with their loss without having to sort through piles of randomly-organized papers. These series of mine serve as almost the sole exception since I've been trying to organize them into individual manuscripts as I produce them. Then, the problem of where to permanently store those babies comes into question, creating another question with no discernable answer. Everything I do seems to eventually turn into just so much Clutter.

I do have bursts when I swive a path through this stuff. Moving was always an effective medium within which I'd at least organize my stuff into boxes. Unpacking became the challenge then, for the space that successfully contained the clutter in the last place would not be found in the new one, and I was never very skilled at deliberately creating clutter. The stuff always starts organized in some fashion. True Clutter accumulates and cannot be designed or pre-emptively determined. It must follow the age-old rules for becoming Clutter. These include looking forward and not behind and cultivating a creating mind, one more interested in producing new than resting on laurels. Proper Clutter comes from slough, cast-off, and abandon.

I am always plotting a change in my ways. Most days, I spend time planning how to organize my basement workshop or garage. I'm aware and embarrassed at how my possessions evolved from a place for everything and everything in its place to a more or less random distribution. I can usually find something if I need to, but it increasingly takes more time to find it, and I often have to go out and acquire what I'm sure I already have somewhere. This wasteful lifestyle needs to find a wrinkle in time where I can solely focus on the present and freeze all my stuff in time, if only for a second. I want to find someplace for most things and something for most of my places. Finding such places seems to require an inordinate amount of space, more than I ever feel I have available.

I'm rarely prouder, though, than just after I've completed a massive clean-up. Clutter conquered, I brazenly step forward, believing my slate wiped clean and ready for anything. Even though I know for sure that within a remarkably short time, that squeaky-clean new order will succumb to some inevitable sloughing, I've accomplished something. Entropy will shortly have her way, and my impressive accomplishment will, if not turn to dust, shortly be covered with a fresh patina of it. I wonder what Grace my Clutter brings? Does it embody the better parts of myself without my always recognizing it? I see my workbench as a shortcoming when it might serve as an accurate self-portrait. Tidiness might be close to Godliness, but to Clutter sure seems human and might only exist to remind us we are not Gods. On my better days, I appreciate who I am more than I aspire to become anybody different. Perhaps my Clutter serves as my signature here, poor but honest penmanship and prefectly representative.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Grace, #PureSchmaltz