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When I was growing up in Texas, I was organized and tidy, annoying. I slept at night eager to make my bed the next morning, and I took great pleasure in washing and drying the containers by hand and making sure that the vacuum cleaner left accurate marks on the carpet.
Somewhere along the way, my daily routine underwent a complete overhaul. After graduating from New York University, I began the life of an almost obsessive-compulsive disorder, wandering between countries and continents and escaping the idea of a permanent home. However, I continued to accumulate goods in all these countries, and seeing the inability to travel with all of them, I began to disperse to other countries in the homes of friends and strangers.
Although the chaotic arrangement was certainly liberating in its own way, it also caused a scattered sense of self, though I imagined some control over my universe, leaving written lists of things where, for example, ” KILO PERSIAN POETRY BOOK, ETHIOPIAN BOL-THING, SARAJEVO STRAWBERRY SOCKS, CAMBODIA SUPERMARKET DRESS RAINBOW DRESS ”, etc.
But when the coronavirus pandemic struck in March 2020, it was no longer easy to establish order in my life by constantly being on the move. When my first world was blocked, my 12-day stay in the coastal town of Zipolite in Mexico became a month and then six months and then a year. However, I now continue to reject any suggestion that I was effectively “living” there.
Instead of using this opportunity to order myself mentally — to experiment with living a life in one place, as opposed to many parallel lives in different geographies — my solution was to go through the place. Rocking in my hammock in Zipolit, my thoughts raced briskly through the memories of other cities and countries, as if I were competing not to live in the moment.
There was also a lot of physical scattering, then I continued to accumulate material goods that I could not download to other people. Thanks to the internet, I accumulated all the inexplicable and unnecessary elements – the behavior that I blamed as “coronavirus capitalism” —such as three pairs of heels. That’s because I couldn’t even walk in high heels and, in Zipolit, I generally didn’t wear shoes.
Every morning, I watched with envy as the people of the village swept and swept away everything that could be swept or swept away in the morning ritual they performed: houses, courtyards, streets, beaches, dirt. I started accumulating edges and other tools one day with the intention of inaugurating such a seemingly therapeutic routine, but this was left in the realm of fantasy and the broom only collected dust.
The only routine I was able to maintain seemed to be one of mass disorder, which I followed almost as if it were a form of art. There were notebooks, pens, swimsuits on every surface of my house, clothes I had never worn because I was always wearing a swimsuit, empty wine bottles, face masks, Mexican pesos, chipotle chiles, pieces of paper that reminded me of capital letters to clean. , I labeled them as mosquito nets, plastic bags, “plastic bags” as an empty box to prepare for the organization, and I rescued a large stuffed pig from attempts by a neighbor to throw it away.
Then there was dirt and sand everywhere, which I not only caught from the beach, but also entered on my own, as the windows always had to be left open to prevent suffocation due to the heat.
Although the whole scene was awesome, there was something compelling about the challenge of remembering my Sri Lankan insect bite remedy that hid my tweezers under the pile of shorts or what plastic bag it hid.
Sure enough, the mess also challenged the choice of sustainability that I found so scary.
Eventually, however, it became unbearable, especially when I started traveling again, first on trips inland in Mexico and then on a two-month trip to Turkey and Albania. When they returned to Zipolite, their suitcases and bags would be left unpacked on the ground, adding to the many obstacles to visiting the midnight toilet and providing more attractive accommodation options for scorpions.
The confusion began to consume, and I felt more and more in a state of imprisonment as I tried to work on my last book while sitting on the couch tossing Turkish tea, sunglasses, sarong, electronics, and the requested plastic shelves. It was off the internet but still unmounted. As usual, everything inside me was covered with a layer of sand.
I spent less and less time writing and more and more time worrying about what this mess all meant psychologically. A quick Google search led to such predictable headlines: “How the environment we create is a reflection of our situation,” “Space psychology: what does your home say about you?” and “Clean the room. Clean yourself.”
My house is me, I told myself: pretty much on the outside, disaster on the inside. And yet I still couldn’t get it to clean up because it was impossible to know where to start.
Not one friend, but two friends tied me up and threatened to clean the house for me after I woke up at 4:30 in the morning and started searching, with the first rage, that I would never be put to rest. confusion, and then in a milder way, as sand and dirt were well collected on the manageable hills.
I still have a long way to go – and I doubt I’ll ever get to bed – but at least the words go again.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial attitude of Al Jazeera.
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