Shhhhh

I mopped all of the hairballs and food (okay, mostly pizza) particles off of my black-and-white-checkered tile floor yesterday. It needed it. After days (okay, weeks) of neglect, my apartment needed spiffing up. In part because I just read (in Time Out New York, maybe?) that cockroaches love clutter. I have never had bugs at my place, but God forbid....

I concentrated on the soft shhhhh-shhhhh sound of the mop. I was tired but knew I needed to do this, to clean this, to make all of this better and more livable. A few strokes in, I realized that not only was I tired, but my lower back was sore and raw. PMS, no doubt: something I rarely have. Call me lucky.

I listened to the mop, and I listened to my body in the space of my small kitchen and hallway. There was something soothing about hearing from my cells that I was tired, knowing that my body was spent, and accepting those signs of fatigue as a stoplight, that I should slow down.

It's instinct, all of it -- like the way we reach for a lover at night in bed, hands passing each other, accidentally knocking into one another, almost desperately searching for familiar skin, or maybe some answer that isn't coming or presenting itself the way we'd pictured.

There's something real in all of it that's to be embraced and appreciated for what it is (biology? continuity? a furthering of the species?). But it's what we do with that information that gives us personality, gumption, and self-restraint.