the untidiness handbook

 
Don’t come into my house expecting to find order.
My dwelling is almost an obstacle course. Books
languor on the coffee table, on end tables, one or
two on the nightstand in the bedroom. Those in
the bookcase standing like soldiers at ease, some
leaning on others like drunken companions.
 
In packing boxes and plastic cases, in various rooms,
are record albums, 33 1/3 rpm. (Does anyone else still have
these?) Modern technology demands that we have our
music collected in CDs or contained in MP3 players, and
whatever other miracles I’m not aware of. But these seem
to lack the allure of vinyl circles in artistically designed
 
cardboard jackets. Loose leaves of paper, some resting on
the desk top, most in tumbling stacks on the shelves, all
of them scratched with absurdities, each of which I’ve
renamed ‘poem.’ I pattern my untidiness after nature: the
way leaves fall from trees in autumn, seashells uncaringly
tossed on a beach, stars blinking in the night sky, never in
 
neat rows and columns… What was I saying? Oh, my improper
housekeeping, my carelessly kept treasures. When I’m dead,
these will be gathered, tossed into a pit, and burned.
The smoke, the ashes, the essence…the essence…will rise above
the rooftops, above the clouds, and in this spiritual ascension,
they’ll be with me again.