(An update: I talk “dust work” versus my new chapbook project Dust Work, and how to tidy up a trail.)
Since mid-December, I’ve been working on a hybrid-narrative writing project called Dust Work in the Valley of Dry Bones.
The name, of course, is rather spooky. Just the way I like things – but really, I’ve used the term “dust work” for several years now, privately, to designate my writing practice without putting too much pressure on myself.
And I’d be lying if I spun a clean origin for the term. The two main points I can remember are: first, Lent – which, notoriously, begins with Ash Wednesday: ashes to ashes, dust to dust – and, second, a book I read during high school called The Secret Life Of Dust (Hannah Holmes), which examines dust as a necessity for creating environments for life.
Now put the two together.
The idea that emerges for me is that this untidy desert of a “right here, right now” in which I continually find myself is…actually a pretty good place to do whatever it is I’m doing. That is, the dust – the untidiness – is crucial to the business.
So let me circle back to what that is:
In Dust Work in the Valley of Dry Bones, I examine “cleaning” as an answer to the question: “how to live?”
From my project summary:
“Cleaning is often taken for granted. Yet precisely because cleaning is meant to disappear, it becomes a powerful force linking memory and erasure, care and control, kinship and identity.
From a prophet who talks too much, to a trash can where waste is hand-placed for perfect tidiness, the chapbook asks what a life leaves in its wake – and what gets tidied to preserve the “clean version” of events.”
The clean version? How on earth do we get to that?
There are already very useful books that address practical aspects of this question. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (Marie Kondo), and The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning (Margareta Magnusson) (a surprisingly cheerful read) are two of my non-ironic favorites.
And then there are the…less straightforward approaches.
That is, there is already a rich body of artistic and intellectual work built around the idea of “maintenance work.”
The arts and writing of Mierle Laderman Ukeles; Selma James; and Lenka Clayton; are particularly representative of work interrogating the who/what/why of domestic routines.
And when I lift the dust cover off these pieces of intellectual framing, the real story: these ideas resonate because they are filtered through my own vivid experience of life with a…full-time, stay-at-home mother.
One whose frustrations with housework were rooted in knowledge of the same feminist movement that bolstered the above-mentioned artists and activists; and whose own artistic mindset and vision of her space engendered what can best be described as a particularly rigorous methodology of cleaning-as-continual-practice.
Of course, regarding my own “maintenance work:” I’ve spent years living as an adult and trying/failing/trying to tidy my life into order. I’ve cleaned up after myself and after roommates; I’ve also tried methods ranging from “ignore it” to “put it in a box.” I’m currently trying a hybrid approach called “ignore it but do just enough laundry/dishes to sort of count.”
And yet – this process of writing about cleaning has been very important to me: not as a penance or manifesto or “how-to,” but as a way to finally, realistically acknowledge to myself that – there isn’t really a way to live and be clean at the same time.
It isn’t a moral judgement. That is: as long as I am part of a system, I’ll leave a trail. I’ll leave carbon dioxide and skin cells and hair. I’ll shake lint off my clothes and pick up cat hair when I sit down. I’ll drop tissues, scuff walls and doors, lose my favorite hoodie somewhere in Texas – learn all the stains on the walls at both my places of work; put a piece of tape on the lifting desk laminate at one of them. And throw away empty sardine tins at the other, regularly and surreptitiously. All of these things will leave trails.
No amount of maintenance work will completely erase them. No amount of talking about maintenance work will, either.
But if “cleaning” is one answer to the question of “how to live,” it is important to acknowledge a property of cleaning that is immediately obvious to anyone who’s done a lot of it. That is: it’s cyclical. Recursive. Things are clean, and then the dust settles. And then – you clean. Sometimes you clean for yourself, sometimes you clean for others and hope someone likewise picks up the slack for you (or at least has poor eyesight for dust) – but the process itself will never cease. As long as you’re in relation with life, you’re in some sort of relation with the business of picking/not picking up after yourself.
So: dust work. The business of dust settling, new dust rising: the space for life to emerge.
You see what a difference a clean version can make?
Skeleton At The Feast 
I love the idea that dust and us coexist and, embracing this, after reading your words, actually eases the strain of that relationship.
How dose cleaning live with me. So many angles. Sometimes I escape by folding laundry. It’s a reset from the chaos. Sometimes I can’t stand that I have one more thing to do.. and that includes laundry. Fun, isn’t a word for cleaning, but there is a satisfying victory at the competition of something that was nagging the conscience, ie sticky refrigerator messes. However, doing little chores are a good choice of moving about meditatively, while avoiding other more tedious things such as taxes.
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It’s true that cleaning can often be an escape! I’ve never had such carefully folded laundry as when I had term papers to write. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts!
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My wife died two and a half years ago after a short illness, leaving me alone in an attic studio flat bursting full of her possessions. Her family and friends, being abroad haven’t been to collect any of her things, so, not that I particularly treasure them, I just haven’t had a reason yet to sort out, and not having a car, anything I do decide to take to a charity shop, or otherwise get rid of, tends to end up by the door, for ever.
And also there’s suddenly no one telling me to clean – no one visiting for new to tidy up for, and so my routines have evolved in a way that pleases me. I do most of my cooking in a covered, heavy bottomed frying pan, that also serves as my plate. I have a rule that if I can remember what the last meal cooked in it was, and when, It doesn’t need to be cleaned, but generally I will try to empty the pan as I eat, and then use bread or rice, or potatoes to wipe it round, and then swish it round with a little water that I’ll then drink.
About 20 years ago I stayed in a Benedictine monastery at Pluscarden in Scotland, I hated it! And the food was abysmal, but I loved how the monks sorted their dishes; they would each wipe their own bowl with bread, then a monk would come around with a jug of water, and poor some into each monk’s bowl, they would swish it round a bit, and drink it, and then put it into a recess under the table where they sat. They all sat at the same place for each meal, so if they didn’t clean their bowl properly, it was their own problem.
It gets me thinking about how cleaning would have been intensely connected to status, culminating in the Edwardian/Victorian eras with massive houses full of servants busy at work cleaning everything from the scullery step to the silverware.
I have two allotments to work and I don’t worry when there’s mud on my knees, I don’t worry about status, and I would have thought that in this post servile age the population would get over this obsession, but it seems to have got stronger, in all but me!
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I loved reading your account of dishes; friends who frequently go hiking have shared something similar. There’s something special in finishing a meal and knowing no extra clean-up is needed! A very personal sense of luxury. Thanks so much for sharing.
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