scratch and dent

today's my last day of work for a week. a whole week. people asked me what i was doing next week; my pat answer is "staying home. steam cleaning my carpets. making a dent in the house."

if i glance around the living room, i remember why i want to stay home on my vacation--the house is a mess. and most of the mess is mine.

*sigh*

i read somewhere that adhd folks have issues with making piles. termites, eat your hearts out--i've got piles everywhere in the house. tackling them seems like a monumental, spinning-gold-from-straw type of task, but it's got to be done.

looking around again, i'm near to overwhelmed. how can i think to accomplish this in a week? inconceivable!

at the same time, i know it needs to be done. my committment is that it doesn't have to all be done at one time--i don't have to get the mass of mess cleaned up in the span of a week. i just need to make a dent.

lately i've been watching dan make a dent in the world, too. he's gone to an interview that turned out to be a mere testing session, and another this morning, for a job that he never will want, not in a million years. either of them, however, has more potential than nothing, i suppose. and he's temping at another job, at which he's unhappily excelling.

i think he has a sense of pride, in that he is doing so well at it, but to him it's so elementary that he doesn't expect any less of himself.

i see him eyeing up the job market every day, in the same manner as me, eyeing my massive mounds of what will probably turn out to be mostly garbage.

in our own feeble human ways, we're trying to make a dent in something, trying to scratch out existence on the planet. i always think that cavemen, or whoever was scraching the surface for the first few millenia, could never have felt the lack of success that we so often do: they'd have to succeed, just in order to eat.

i'm sure that a mammoth, to your average pre-gunpowder crowd, was the same size as the seemingly insurmountable tasks that are set before us now--my mountains and dan's job search for a good, permanent job that he won't go bald while working at.

i'm sure that someone who woke up now, after living back at the dawn of humanity, would think that we have it infinitely simpler: the mammoth is in nice, pre-cut slabs at the grocery store, and you don't have to do anything other than cook it. there's dentistry and sanititation, life well beyond the age of 40.

it'd be quite shocking, i'm sure.

then again, after a good amount of time, this hypothetical thawed pre-history person would no doubt be hankering for a good romp through the fields with sharpened stick in hand--that seems so much easier than dealing with healthcare plans and a nine-to-nine job. it's just you and the mammoth; you kill it and eat and live, or you get dented by the mammoth.

lately, i see dan being dented by the mammoth. which sounds so ridiculous, but it's my own inner metaphor for the world in which we're now living.

***

i'm a big fan of second-hand items; most of my house is furnished in them. lots of the dents and scratches are not mine, or if they are, i don't remember how they got there. over time, i've become a second-hand item.

does it make me worth any less? or is this how you become human--acquiring the mental and physical scarring that separates you from your neighbor, and yet joins you to that same neighbor? because everyone you know has survived, regardless of the magnitude of odds or obstacles, and your ancestors before them--long or short lives, they lived and you're sitting here, now, reading something brought to you only because one of my ancestors survived a shipwreck.

i must be optimistic this morning due to the impending vacation. but i'm looking at the world through dark glasses, seeing each year etched into my body. in the pattern of dents, i can see the tale of how i've survived to this point, what i've gone up against, how i'm still here.

in this era, the only difference is what you call that mammoth.