Messy Desk -- Does Anyone Believe the Genius Excuse?

During the years we lived in the farmhouse on the hillside we had an across the street neighbor who was compulsively neat. I know that she was because she told me-- I could hear her weeping as she told me over the phone that she thought she was going nuts. She said she couldn't go to bed at night unless everything was in perfect order. For instance, she said, she would get up unable to sleep because she had not arranged the magazines on the coffee table in their proper order.

She actually told me she wished she could be like me! Me, with the projects going on all over the house and outside-- me with the hectic schedule of car pools and other people's children trooping through the house and cats raising kittens in the bathroom and dogs raising puppies in the kitchen. My house was anything but neat and orderly.

It still is that way and it still bothers me to see the disarray on my desk and in the kitchen and in the many places in the house where things have been put "for the time being while we finish… (name a project)." I did have a compulsively neat environment a couple of times in my life. During my year at boarding school I had a very messy roommate, and it was a matter of shaming her that prompted me to make my bed as soon as I got out of it and dust all surfaces every single day. It had no effect on her, but it probably made a very efficient student out of me, and I did have a very successful school year. Then, during the first year of my marriage I became fastidiously neat-- ironing the laundry as soon as it came off the line, polishing and waxing and putting away. I never went to bed with anything undone -- the place was impeccable until our first baby came and changed the center of control completely.

I keep hoping that the motto that people sell at the book stores "A messy desk is the mark of a genius" is true, but I suspect it is actually the mark of a person with not enough discipline to schedule Filing into one's routine. Offices hire Filing Clerks. They also hire Maintenance Personnel and call out for pizza. My desk is not in an office-- it's in a house with just a couple of project-y people living in it, doing things, researching, writing, inventing and creating. We get "on a roll" and "in the zone" and time whizzes by and the dishes are still in the sink, newspapers, periodicals, bills and hard copy pages of interesting findings pile up on the desk (we know which pile to look in), and the light gets turned out on them.

Next morning there are all the exciting things waiting to be resumed and the papers are left in their piles and the dishes get put into the dishwasher when I think about needing them for a meal sometime.

Expecting Company is good-- it forces the issue and a lot of dust goes up into the air when I try to make a spot in the living room where a group of civilized people might like to sit and have a regular conversation. I usually allow two days at least for such a visit-- and just derail my schedule of projects entirely. I put bunches of stuff into boxes and tuck it away out of sight until the visitors go away. Sometimes I don't bother to get the boxes out again for many months. I find one at Christmas and think, "Oh, yes…this was the mosaic I was messing around with…" or, "Ah-- I wondered whatever happened to that book-- and here I have already bought another one from Amazon."

What would I do if the whole place burned down? Once a house next to us burned literally to the ground, and what our neighbors burst into tears about was the family album. I've split our family albums up around the family, making sure there's plenty out there in case anyone loses the family album. There's some furniture that is valuable because it's old and unusual and usually because it belonged to someone I loved. But it's really just furniture-- like a house is furniture-- a thing that furnishes your life with a place to operate.

There's not much that is forever. The thing that goes fastest is time. Then there's energy and health and motivation. That lasts less long than furniture. People die and their furniture lives on until it too gives out. If you get famous, your output may outlive your furniture, but eventually it usually gets "obsolete" (or if you are Cezanne, it gets nearly unaccessibly precious.")

What is left when all the stuff falls away? I think it's the stuff that was in "Igluk" or Adam that stays alive from First Human to tomorrow's newborn -- the glimmer of spirit and beauty and hope and love and creativity that moves us to make an effort-- to puzzle out ideas -- to collect stuff on our desks and wear out our furniture and leave the dishes in the sink while we work on it.

My logical self is telling me that I will be more efficient and more successful at all this "work" if I straighten out my environment and file my papers neatly. I'm pretty sure it is true.

My persistent Spirit of Igluk is saying "never mind the dishes, let's create!"

And I have to admit that there's a small voice piping up in the back row saying, "But it is such a wonderful feeling to get it all cleaned up when company's coming." I am thinking of the twice-a-year visit of friends who usually come in September. I could start early!

But no.

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