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October 25, 2016
daily notes, from the editor
Laura Lowery
more than housekeeping October 25, 2016 - Daily Notes

Shampooing the carpets last week was more than housekeeping. It was a two-day act of presence, a commitment to what is happening in my life right now, and a practice in slowing down to remember that my creative power does not lie in some imagined future. It is here in this moment. This is my home today.

The man in my life has his own house, too. As our relationship unfolds, as we navigate the waterways of what we know, what we want, and what we don't, I have pictured myself moving into it. It is a logical consideration, one we teeter on the edges of conversationally...neither of us really knows how deep that water goes. The future. If one spends enough time there, she can go mad. Time warps and it becomes unclear just where her roots are, where her center is, where her creativity is drawn from. Would I have a room of my own in his house, if it were to become ours? Would he?

These are questions that go deeper than one can see from up here above the surface.

But the carpet in my own house has needed a good scrub for awhile. I kept putting it off because, well, what if I move? No decision like that has yet been made, but there I was, living in an imagined future and asking myself, "Will the time, expense and physical exhaustion of cleaning these carpets be wasted?" The answer is of course not. This is where I live now. They must be cleaned.

I sit on my meditation pillow in the evening and remember not only where I'd like to go, but where I am and the woman I am today. I appreciate her willingness to be vulnerable, honest, uncertain, and to launder this floor.

We do this, we humans. I know you do it too. The future becomes the focus. It's okay sometimes. It's necessary to nod in that direction and flick a little fairy dust toward our dreams. But our creative power lives right here, now, in the middle of the mess. It is unsettled, unknown, and uncertain. It requires more than good housekeeping, it requires presence-keeping.

Grateful, I smile and breathe.

I love clean rugs.