New Not-a-Bill Received

I would say, on the whole, that so far Aetna's 6-page missives are more explanatory than my United/American Medical Security ones ever were.

So far, it looks like nothing is going toward the annual deductible (?) and that I owe an ER-copay and a doctor's fee.

In other news, the house is getting me down. I don't know what happened to the "to do" list that was posted on the refrigerator for the first three years we were here, but I have a solid sense that very little that was on it was accomplished.

Mostly things have reached a crisis of accumulation, an accretion that threatens to bury me.

No, there are not giant stacks of newspapers everywhere, with little paths between and infested with rodents. There are small stacks of things, however, some even in proper storage containers. The problem is that they represent objects at rest upon which no force is predicted to act in the forseeable future.

There are dust bunnies that, when collected, add up to regular lapine size – and with such frequency that my ardent Swiffer-ing cannot be faulted as the cause.

A dining room table where no one dines. Upon its cloth are a few broken bowls, one containing feathers, some candlesticks, an oil lamp and a stack of postcards that represent 25¢ each were they to be processed as data entry "work at home" work.

A living room in which nothing lives. Magazines are splayed open along the sides of the couches to deter the resident feline from shredding at them. Charming decor.

The deacon's bench has not been a place anyone could sit for perhaps two years. Mostly it has items that were given to us and unwanted. I am too conservative, though, to recycle into oblivion the potentially hazardous (look up aluminum and Alzheimer's) ice-cube trays, for example. They maintain such a pleasing mid-century design and a quaint hint at engineering that I simply can't discard them willingly. There is a lidded soup-pot in the back of our car, a more recent unsolicited give-quisition … along with a few other odds and ends that obliterated the Wow, The Car Is Free Of Both Clutter And Trash that I accomplished a mere month ago.

Entropy.

I don't mind the forces of nature bringing things around in cycles of birth, decay and rebirth – what I struggle with is the human construct that it's Noble to struggle against them. A house is a place of false security. It was made once by human hands only to be ever-needy of their continual intervention.

Would I be happier replastering a hut annually with mud? I don't know. But this hut is so huge by comparison that I can't think of where to begin. I remember when, so long ago in micro-domestic geological ages, the basement was clear, its floor sweepable, its only drawback a few crickets which moved out soon after we moved in.

The basement stairs are still insecure. The stairs leading from the back door are approaching a hazardous state. The hot water pressure is laughable. Think of how depressing it is to take a shower in America like that. Good morning! I wonder that the showers in prison aren't of better quality. I might as well hoist up kettle-water and dump it from a bucket. I might not mind that if other things were not also troubling.

How about this one-year plan:

• paint the rooms that have always wanted painting; plaster up the weird holes and paint — it will improve the mental environment in at least two ways
• scrounge up $10k and get someone to replace the roof … (keeping in mind that the IRS is waiting for approx. $5,000 presently)
• take a real vacation from work that is several days longer than a standard keep-up weekend and haul away or store off-site in plastic tubs all the items that are pre-art-projects (clothes, frames, metals, material, etc.)
• make making things something that happens in a studio of deliberate intention
• see what happens when there is more free space around
• see if someone won't buy it as-is for perhaps the size of the loan it holds
• leave anyway

When I was growing up, I saw twice and for many years the way a house can tear down a life if the life is not financially large enough to support it. I suppose I wonder most about how I did not learn a thing from this long observation. I even had the lesson repeated to me as an adult. What folly the American Dream, that it is strong enough to insinuate itself behind one's own logic and training.

It may have been easier to have just had children.