I let go of a piece of perfection.
I wash my kitchen floor.
I don’t know when I last washed it.
How is that letting go of perfection?
Because I tend to let the scrubbing go until I can plant my knees on this mat.
Until I can do it up perfect.
So I tend to just not do it.
But today I buy a mop.
And while I dance with it, I dance with my words and thoughts.
I pay attention to the way light plays on the floor and the shine difference between the washed and unwashed.
I work my way around chair and table legs, scrape up a dried black blob of squashed blueberry with the back of a spoon.
I’m frustrated with my kitchen cabinets, the ones with wooden lazy susans installed on rigid steel conduit back in the 60s.
The ones that shed sawdust all over everything.
I think I stacked too many cans of beans and tomatoes on them in the past because the bottom shelf has slipped down to the height of a tuna can, and I’ve smashed my fingers in the door way too many times to count.
I want a new kitchen.
But for now I have to work with what I have.
Sigh.
I think about how I, like L.L., have been weighed down by the beans and tomatoes in my life.
How do I make beauty out of sawdust?
I imagine that I’ve finally stripped all the kitchen wallpaper. That I’ve painted the walls and repainted the blue cabinets, all–white?
I imagine a more efficient work space, and guests oooohing and aaaahing over my decorating skill and culinary art.
My husband laughs at my current obsession with Chopped. But I love to watch those chefs race the clock while they create beauty and flavor out of four mystery ingredients. They are culinary artists.
Speaking of art (this is how my mind jumps), I imagine holding my first novel or a book of poetry and reading rave reviews.
I see shelves lined with my books.
I imagine all the perfect ingredients for the perfect creative life at my fingertips.
So I can create beauty.
Time flies. I must hurry.
Then I remember L.L.’s words.
“This is the secret of the prolific writer. To agree to use small beans and the ingredients at hand. To cultivate out of potlucks and basement-bargains.”
I dump the soapy gray water in the snow and watch steamy fingers curl upward.
“In the writer’s life,” says L.L., “there are no rules about timing or quantity.”
“Write with what you have,” she says.
Maybe I have the perfect ingredients after all.
I pour a cup of tea and sit down to watch the birds.
Reflections on Chapters 5 and 6 of L.L. Barkat’s newest book, Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity & Writing.
oh, I like that ending!
tea, birds, and a switch in perspective 🙂
I get a lot of inspiration from those birds. 🙂
Oh, I don’t like mopping, but LOVE the results. I have to “make” myself get started on a new writing project and then it flows. Ha, results are mixed, tho’. Oh, I love chopped, too. 🙂
Oh, isn’t that the way with most things? Just start. And down with perfection. Up with excellence.
You are an exceptionally fine writer Sandy. I have every confidence that you will spin out those dreams out of what He has already placed in your hands.
You are an exceptionally fine encourager. 🙂
I have never been inspired while mopping (laundry, yes.). Way to go, Sandy!
LOL! I loved your laundry poem! 🙂
This is SO beautiful and so real and SO normal.
🙂
Love your idea of dancing with the mop. I think more in terms of shoving it through the dirt. Your perspective is much better. The idea of a prolific writer using the small, simple tools at hand rather than writing from a vast storehouse of wisdom and perfection. Wow – maybe I do have what I need.
And my dance floor still needs mopping…
Writing with what we have–I think there are a lot of words in there. 🙂
What a fun post! I enjoy all your posts! We saw our first bluebirds today…in the Bird Bath…..drinking and bathing! Is Spring coming early to GA??!!
Thanks, Jackie. I love bluebirds!
I have a small kitchen area… and I still put off the scrubbing. Planning it, but so easily sidetracked. You know… reading posts, FB-ing, and reading again… then I don’t have to crawl around the floor. Sweeping works for quite a while since it’s just Dave and I and we’re pretty careful. Anyhow, there’s lots of other fun things to do besides some of the cleaning aspects. [Not that my house is trashy… just not perfect.]
Definitely–lots of other more fun things to do. Lots.
I am so grateful for your words (and L.L.’s) early this morning. I was very disappointed about something regarding writing yesterday….wondering if I was kidding myself about being a painter of words. Something I came across recently will bless you, I believe.
“If the work comes to the artist and says, “Here I am, serve me,” then the job of the artist, great or small, is to serve. The amount of the artist’s talent is not what it is about. Jean Rhys said to an interviewer in the Paris Review, “Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don’t matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.”
To feed the lake is to serve, to be a servant. Servant is another unpopular word, a word we have derided by denigrating servants and service. To serve should be a privilege, and it is our shame that we tend to think of it as a burden, something to do if you’re not fit for anything better or higher.
I have never served a work as it ought to be served; my little trickle adds hardly a drop of water to the lake, and yet it doesn’t matter; there is no trickle too small. Over the years I have come to recognize that the work often knows more than I do. And with each book I start, I have hopes that I may be helped to serve it a little more fully. Madeleine L’Engle
So glad this was an encouragement. And thanks so much for sharing Madeleine’s quote. No trickle too small. Our job is to feed the lake. 🙂