It's tea for me tonight. And tea for me last night, too. No alcohol, not tonight. Not last night either. I haven't left my house since I got back from Oklahoma a few days ago except to go to work and band practice. Why? It's not because I'm boring, I'll tell you that much right now. No, it's because I'm sick. Not really sick, but the kind of sick where you think you're getting sick. It all started when I went to Oklahoma..
Ah, to get away for a few days- fresh air, a change of scenery, leaving behind the hounds of hell that catapult through the house at all hours of the night and early, early fucking mornings. It's always nice. Leaving behind the foul stench of the Trinity River and the orange overturned bowl of pollution that domes the D/FW sky is simply refreshing. The sweet, cool breeze from the Oklahoma hills shocks the senses like a sharp cheddar, or a stout wine. Or a sponge filled with asbestos. It's poison!
Let me explain. I live in filth. For those that know me and have been to my house on some sort of regular basis, it will come as no surprise to hear that a common question upon entering my house is, "When did you get robbed?" You see, besides having three dogs who can come in and out of the house as they please since our foundation is fucked and whose natural penchant is to kill squirrels and rats and tear them apart on my kitchen floor, couch, or kitchen couch, and having a roommate who, by his own account, is a total slob, there's me- a roommate that really doesn't care too much for social graces, and so therefore doesn't really care if there are melon rinds and tripe lining the hallway. I don't care if anyone sees it - I didn't make the mess. Hence, I will not clean the mess. My own room is not particularly disgusting, most of the time. Sure, there's always clutter- piles of clothes here, stacks of papers there, the occassional cat shit when I don't stay on top of cleaning the litter box, which is admittedly too often.
The point is, and this is not a decision that was conciously made- it happened organically- mine is what some might call a punk house. In fact, I've been to squats that were less filthy. Can't say it bothers me too much. I'm kind of into it, actually. Were it not for my sweet, gracious and mildly OCD-about-cleanliness girlfriend, this place would probably never be clean.
I say all of this to posit a question. How is it that I, a person who actually kicks up more dirt and germs when I walk into my house, showers maybe once a week (on a good week), and spends most of my time in seedy bars and even worse rehearsal rooms, manage to stay relatively healthy most of the time, even while being a smoker, keeping odd, irregular hours, and subsisting on a majority of junk food? Why, were we to believe all the Purell commercials, I should've been dead a long time ago!
I think my body has adapted to the grime, and let me tell you something, people. When it all comes down, and we're foraging for food and hiding in sewers waiting to stab some guy in the calf as he walks by because he's got a piece of edible food in his hands, and there's a man walking around with a 9mm handgun offering to shoot you in the head for the meager price of a piece of bread (read Flan by Stephen Tunney to fully appreciate this reference), guess who's gonna be around a negligible amount of time more? Me, that's who.
More than anything, I have a sneaking suspicion that leaving my filthy house and my filthy city to go to a clean city, and an even cleaner house to sleep in is really what got me sick. All that clean air, no dust in the pillows, no cat hair on the towels, that really did me in. It was all I could do to drag myself out of bed to get to work today and inhale spray glue and burning fabric fumes at the screenprinting shop.
It's those little things, though, that really start to make you feel better. My cough is already fading, and my phlegm is clearing up from a dark green to a light yellow, which is good. My girlfriend told me so.
2 comments:
You're taking a pretty big risk that the next evolultionary jump is going to require the ability to survive filth. It would seem to ME that with the current trend towards anti-bacterial obsessive cleanliness, that we clean freaks will be the ones who last a negligible amount of time longer.
On the other hand, in my evolutionary biology class in college, I learned that "edge organisms" are the ones who can survive major evoluationary changes. Examples would be deer, rabbits, roaches - all creatures that can live in almost any environment and sustain themselves on refuse if necessary. I would say you would fall into the category of an edge organism, no problem.
You totally got comment-spammed by a blog devoted to selling cat litter boxes.
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