This is not a sentence, either.
In fact, having said that the above was neither a post nor a sentence, I am left to ponder the imponderable: What makes a post a post? For that matter, what makes a sentence a sentence?
Let us leave such maunderings to the philosophers, shall we?
However, the thought does occur: In order to fill up my post, should I toss nonsensical notions, thoughts, musings, and so on overboard, then jump in after them, and fish them out, bedraggled and spitting mad at me?
You see, I missed posting something yesterday, so I didn’t want to miss a post today. I have no excuses, really. I accept my responsibility in this matter, messieurs et mesdames.
Okay, well, I was tired.
Okay, well, that’s not much of an excuse.
I was also exhausted and weary.
Also, not much of an excuse, I agree.
Well then, I had to do lots and lots of laundry to attend to.
Not much of an excuse still?
And I am a school-teacher.
I mean, being a school-teacher is about living in a la-la land of paradoxical states of mind. School energizes and enervates me. School uplifts me and makes me feel downcast. School can make one learn and unlearn everything in a single second. School is a black hole that can never be filled with enough work, because it desires more and more, and nothing ever escapes its gravitational pull. This tiredness is that of prisoners who have been exposed to endless artificial light, so that it breaks them down, except that it doesn’t break me down, so that being tired is almost a badge of honor to be flaunted to the sympathetic (NOT) world.
Still not enough of an excuse? Back to laundry.
I did LOADS and LOADS of laundry yesterday AND today — whole mini-mountains of them. Who creates all this stuff to be washed? It is my theory that clothes multiply (I admit it’s not an original theory, but what the hell) when our backs are turned.
They don’t multiply kindly, or cleanly. They multiply and moulder. Every week, I wash them, dry some in the dryer (careful to set them at the half-mark), hang the other ones up (being Green, you know), fold them and actually put them away. That’s right, AWAY, in lumpy, unpressed stacks. Then, I turn around, and there they are again, next week. Didn’t they get the message? So, I went through all that this week, AND ironed them, and put them away in neat, pressed stacks. And all this makes me feel as if I’m in an endless time-loop.
I hate laundry (but you guessed that, right? What gave it away? My pitiful pixellated moans? Oh, surely not!). I am a slave to my laundry. My clothes haunt my waking hours, and stalk my dreaming hours. They rise up from the floor, and do little jigs, while gesturing rudely to me, and whooshing away in gales of muffled laughter. It’s not as if I don’t do my laundry! I am a good doobie (or, to make an Indian pun, a good dhobi)!
Now, in the middle of school vacation week, a whole lot of guilt piles up on the floor of my soul, waiting for me to pick it all up and wash the whole damned thing clean. I would love some writing inspiration to arrive, and it does come, but I hold it at bay, shake it out, and peg it on lines that might get blown away by a passing whim. It has to be laundered first. I need to write, but it all has to appear in clean, well-pressed, wordpressed sentences, and it’s hard to do when I am nothing but a human laundry machine. But where was I?
Oh right, laundry.
Whole piles of them appear full-blown, like the Gods emerging from Brahma’s mind and belly, ready to utter vengeful curses at me if I let them moulder in dreadful heaps on the bedroom floor. There, my guilty secret is out. I let piles of laundry fester and spawn their young on the bedroom floor — only for a short time (she hastened to reassure her somewhat alarmed and on-the-verge-of-disillusioned readers).
Well, actually, that only happens when I am tired, you see. The problem is, I’m tired most of the time.
Plus, there are piles of papers left to plough through (I did the requisite amount, stipulated by me, for mid-term Progress Reports), but I have other happier obligations during this vacation week. I have a daughter with whom I spend happy hours, reading aloud passages from P.G. Wodehouse novels, while she chuckles with delight. OH, and she and I went to the zoo yesterday, and sang to the wolves, who listened with quiet attentiveness. We miaowed loudly and gutturally to the snow leopard, who responded to us in kind (yes, they miaow!), and we watched with delight when three out of four new little Arctic foxes ran to and fro, playing some sort of distracted game.
This week, I cooked some nice food, played, cleaned some parts of the house, wrote posts, sang with husband and daughter, and lazed. And I did enormous loads of laundry.
I have been domestic, in short.
And this is why I have nothing to say, and this is not a post. All of the above were not sentences at all.
They were pixellated moans of laundry-hating domesticity.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The End~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~