I want to make everything pristine. I yearn for perfect cleanliness, not just bodily but in the spaces in which I live. My home. Our home. I cannot do it. I’ve never been able to. This flat has too many crevices, too many botched corners and unstable skirtings to get at all the dirt and dust I wish to. I try. And everytime cleaning time comes around I feel the deficit. It has always been the way. All those mean rooms I endeavoured to keep clean. It was my way of sweeping away my shame at my (relative, of course) poverty and lack of ability to provide for myself in the way that my parents had provided for me. I’ve not owned any of the spaces, I had to clean what was and what is. Even when we joint owned the house in Cambridge, there wasn’t the money to do the overhaul that I would’ve chosen. I am reminded of impermance and how all of this will be dust, as will I. Nothing matters. It’s just an exercise in control. An empty gesture. And I know this, even when I am sweeping. I want the whiteness, thinking that then, and only then, I will find peace. I want that whiteness, that white room when I am dying. Can I make it happen?
