the fishes will laugh





we're working. the kitchen is half empty of the dishes that have been piling up since saturday. everything crashes over the weekend and we spend the week that follows putting the pieces back together with mod podge and 409 only to have another weekend come around with all its sleep and play.

it would not be so bad if the messes were mere clutter, piles of books and magazines, cups and saucers in innocent stacks on the kitchen table, shoes in a jumble just inside the door. there's plenty of that, and one could wager that the clutter and unruliness of my desk, a stack of paper, a pile of piano student payments to deposit, books for no rhyme or reason, are a permanent fixture in the room, the paper topics varying, the money dwindling and swelling in a rhythm, the book titles marching to their shelves and others marching back out onto the desk to make their own pile.

and it seems that the corner of the hallway has an ever-present rotation of homeless items camped out park-bench style, hats and mittens in a mismatch, one boot, one sock, a pair of diaper pins clipped together, yesterday's mail in a haphazard slump on the radiator, keeping warm through winter wind and snow.

but there is more than clutter. so much more that to write it down in a description of sorts would be an abomination.