Cleaning

[robinturner]

Yesterday, my wife asked if I'd been cleaning the house. I don't know what prompted that question, since our absence from Ankara last week and subsequent tiredness and laziness meant that the place was a disgrace. Anyway, I replied "No, Tuesday's my cleaning day, remember?" She laughed and said I sounded like a cleaning lady.

I've started to feel a lot more respect for cleaning ladies (and those rare creatures, cleaning gentlemen). I used to concur with my wife's opinion that we shouldn't hire a cleaner because they were ripping people off, charging 50 lira (about $40). Assuming that they do two houses per day (and they can probably squeeze in more if they want) that's 100 lira per day, or around 2,000 a month, which is more-or-less what I earn, and I put in all that time getting a degree and an MA. And in the case of many of them, who just do the kind of lick and promise that will satisfy most of the foreigners (i.e. non-Turks) here, it's true. But if we're talking serious cleaning - well that would definitely earn the 50 lira (especially considering that when I do freelance studio work, I can earn five times that in the same time). Serious cleaning is when you use rags, move furniture (and our bed is heavy enough to give you a hernia), screw your fingers into corners, gingerly lift Venetian glass to dust under it ... and that's what I've been doing. I'm only half way through, I'm already on my second dry Martini, and I'm considering paying for a professional massage later this week.

The thing about cleaning is that it is a discipline, an art and a spiritual path. Read William Burroughs' "The Discipline of D.E." if you don't believe me. I'd be happy to do it if it was my only job; in fact, I'd probably love it. As it is, I'm doing it on top of a job that already wears me out, so I think it's time for that third Martini before I tackle the bathroom.

Comments

A matter of orientation

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

When I tell folk about the shift in psyche I've seen in NA, a shift away from foundational spirituality (more precisely: when I try to tell) I usually get blank looks. It's catch-22 ... like talking to someone who's deaf; can't really expect more than that they see your lips moving.

My life-plan had everthing to do with setting up a network of shared-housing residences ... a stretch of good, simple, wholesome living I think would do folk a lotta good. This would be modelled on the Soto Zen "priory" where I trained. But it's a non-starter. It's as though folk just don't get the basic concept.

What I use to illustrate the point connects with where you ended ... the simple humility of the simplest craft. (In the army, in the monastery, at home ... I love the way I can make a bathroom shine! *grin*)
In Japan there's a spiritual order who's main focus is on life as service to others, and 3 guesses what their primary training tool is. *waits* *waits* *waits* Give up?
Cleaning public toilets.
Ayup ... folk use that as a method of training in humility.

Orientation ... bodhicitta isn't even vaguely related to the light/love delusion, it has nothing to do with becoming a bliss-ninny; "oriented towards the good" is almost a physical thing, the way sun-bathers "orient" themselves towards the sun.
BTW: "attitude" is likewise taken as abstract ... but whether a space-ship or an airplane, "attitude" again means orientation relative some other entity.

cheers

Re: A matter of orientation

[solri.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of the scene in Life is Beautiful where Guido takes a job as a waiter and the boss says: "You're serving. You're not a servant. Serving is a supreme art. God is the first servant. God serves men, but he's not a servant to men."

Re: A matter of orientation

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

Now we're paddling around in part of the pool I know /real/ well.

Surya Das was on radio the other day (Lama Surya Das, I should say) and one of the things he talked about was tong.len ... still odd to me that such a practice should be in the public domain, but it is.

He made the point by quoting none of but Jushua, the carpenter's son, talking about how he took on the suffering of others.
The tong.len practice, quite in contrast to "breathing in all the goodness of the world and letting go all the dark feelings" that would be so typical of ESToid yuppie practices, we stabilize and settle and connect to those we care about, bringing onto ourselves their worries and streeses and aches and pains, enlarging that circle, allowing our own innate goodness to radiate outwards. (I call it "psychic air-conditioning".) The idea being that we are actually quite capable ... that our resources are practically unlimited. (Not to say it's easy, but that it's do-able.)

I know my faith in human nature has (finally? *sigh) been deeply shaken: I have come to dread needing others' intervention whereas I used to greet that as an adventure, as an opportunity to establish meaningful human connections.

BTW: a friend was cycling through North Africa and the middle east ... I forget where she was (Yes, a 'she'!) but when she woke up she found a little pile of fresh-baked bread set out on a cloth by the door of her tent.
Hospitality stretches back into timeless history ...
... now displaced by variants of "rugged individualism".

I might fail, but I can't say my life-goal was mistaken.

HeyHo!

Re: A matter of orientation

[solri.livejournal.com]

I think I mentioned that I tried tong-len once after reading "Awakening Loving Kindness", and it was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life. Maybe I was doing it wrong.

I might fail, but I can't say my life-goal was mistaken.

From a Stoic view, in that case, you haven't failed.

Re: A matter of orientation

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

And there's the question about making it public: it really does require at least some rather formal training. (And yes, that book is based on 3 lectures Pema gave, one of them being the one where it was my pleasant chore to don headphones and sit behind the soundboard ... rather nice, actually, as I in charge of it I did it my own way: set up the board right at my seat in the shrine-room so was seated normally and hearing her voice very close in my ears!) Those of us who were there not only had done at least one month-long retreat but the months/years of practice that preceed even that.

If I had to venture a speculation: it's a bit like skiing down a steep slope ... once you lose your footing you tend to become a snowball pretty quickly.
Without suggesting you should persist, I suspect that the reaction you had just shows that, well, you're an open-hearted sort ... it's not so much a matter of being guarded contra defenseless as it is having the stability in the moment not to too quick get into water that's too deep. (I don't enjoy swimming; I tend to freak out, so this metaphor is apt!)

Thanks for the Stoicism comment ... I appreciate that ... but the aim of the game really is to implement something. I'm not talking about something grandiose like a network of practice centers (though that would be nice!) but more like a web service. Not yet.another wiki ... something new, something that would change our relationship to documents such as academic journals ... something that would change citizens' relationship to the decision-making process.
Launching it and having it fail is one thing.
Taking it to my grave with me is quite another.

What I dread most is the vulcano that would erupt inside me if someone else rolled out the design ... after all these years of effort, to get nothing from it ... that would be huh huh rather startling!

cheers

[asteriskhere.livejournal.com]

Last time I checked you could hire cleaning people here for $15 for the day. Goods are terribly overpriced here but services are still pretty darn cheap.

I had a dream with you a few nights ago that I was in Istanbul and visited you (this was before you posted about how you were visiting Istanbul!) I dreamed that I showed up at your place but you and your wife were sleeping in late and both got up kind of stumbling around and I said, "Hey, it's okay, you don't have to be our tour guide, we can get around on our own" (I was with Zoran) to which the two of you agreed and went back to sleep while we went out on the town in a car we couldn't drive/kept getting lost/going on the wrong ramp/typical dream stuff kind of dream.
Just thought I'd share. :)

[solri.livejournal.com]

If you tried driving in Istanbul that would be exactly the experience you would have!

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

Lovely!