The inner workings of the refrigerator one day started to clatter and bang in the back where the motor was, then ceased cooling the lower box. Clunk on, clunk off has been the routine: nothing to notice, until it stops: 'Why is everything going bad?' we ask each other.
Preparing the refrigerator for replacement reveals with what has been present but not acknowledged. It 's dark, dusty, crusty, greasy, discolored, scurfy, gritty behind and beneath. There are dust balls, food splashes, sand swept under from outdoor shoes coming in the nearby back door, spider webs, bacteria, I'm sure, galore: a agricultural site, busy and productive. We do wash the floor but...there are these places we miss.
Emptying out the appliance, we have had to finally to look at the jars of unidentifiable frozen juices and sauces, the plastic contains of forgotten stews and soups, the odd things that cling so tightly to their paper that they can't be separated much less identified. That's up above; down below--whew! It
You dark places at the edges of where we walk and work, you places of where flotsam and jetsam accumulate and fecundate, you places progressively coming loose or beginning to break, you places where detritus collects as if in windrows, or ambivalences are stored until time takes over the decision-making, you places just on the outskirts of our daily traffic, you ring our well-lit spaces, unobtrusive, quietly active.
Disgusting, disappointing, distressing, okay, but not ultimately alien; there's nothing here that hasn't our impress. But our attention is elsewhere. Very likely my mind has these dark grotty rims or wrinkles I'm not called to consider for months at a time, not to mention my relationships.
Scrubbing out, emptying out, airing out used to be the theme of the old books of domestic 'science'. Today teaches me how much I have to practice 'good housewifery.'
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