Unknown Artist: Panel of Uncut “Slip” Designs,
Hemp, plain weave; embroidered with silk in tent stitches (1625-75)

Sometimes, but only sometimes, naming a condition starts the process of resolving it. So it was yesterday when I called out my Clutter before, later, tucking in to clear out some of it. I spent most of my day Uncluttering. If only it were also so easy. I feel grateful that it IS sometimes just that simple.

I've long held that I have an ethical responsibility to discuss whatever's not supposed to be discussed, for undiscussables hold special powers. They can and often do smother whatever latitude I might otherwise have to affect change and create difference. Undiscussables serve as an effective roadblock to most advancements that disappear shortly after I decide to mention them. Large or small, an undiscussable can prove poisonous, and insidiously so, for its hallmark tends to be the dog that didn't bark. Undiscussables leave no footprints in the rose garden or fingerprints on the window sill, yet they serve as thieves in the night, entering unsensed and exiting with treasure.

As I said when introducing my Clutter, I tend to require a wrinkle in time to resolve a Clutter problem. I must set something aside to make enough space to reinject some order. It almost feels like a vacation when I finally find that wrinkle because it's all-consuming. Whatever else I might have been doing fades off the radar, and I start purposefully moving. I'm suddenly on a mission. Blockages that had almost forever successfully held me in check melt like butter before me then. I can see what wasn't even unseen before. Often, some small thing breaks the clog. Yesterday, it was a massive box of leftover yard signs from The Muse's Port Commissioner campaign last year. I'd told myself I could insulate the garage with them or find some other creative use, but they'd just sat, blocking access and attracting similar. One box became a dozen, each with its own improbable future use story. Eventually, the boxes became almost like treasure I was hoarding, except they held no value other than as Clutter successfully roadblocking my advancement.

Give me one roadblock like those boxes, and I can hinder my progress for months. If I have no space within which to fulfill my destiny, I'm unlikely even to attempt to do anything. Crowded out, my future collapses before it manifests. The list of chores I couldn't quite find the time and space to start grows alarmingly, but the blockage almost successfully anesthetizes my reaction. I accomplish nothing but feel little worse for my inaction. I feel genuinely embarrassed when I finally come to bust through the clog, be it a garage filled with boxes or another run-of-the-mill unspeakable. I immediately feel more powerful as recently blocked possibilities finally fall into focus. I drove the cardboard, dutifully flattened, to the recycling station, two full loads in the back of my nifty new pickup truck. The presence of that truck contributed enormously to the Uncluttering, for previously, it was never quite that handy to clear such a clog.

I could get smug following a successful Uncluttering. I feel quite the master of my minuscule universe. The magnitude doesn't matter because Uncluttering's measured only in absolute magnitudes—even the tiniest progress measures in massive effects. A single errant piece of paper can subtly undermine serenity, and disposing of even that insignificance can and does make a huge difference. Only a few substances measure out like that. I suppose love tops that list, and so does Grace, for even the tiniest drop of it seems to affect the whole universe surrounding it. I'd be wise to trade in such commodities, those for whom even the smallest quantities induce huge differences, like mentioning an unspeakable or deciding to dispose of that box filled with leftover Amy For Port campaign yard signs.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Grace, #PureSchmaltz