the calling
[Comments, critique and brutal honesty will be much appreciated, esp. if you could say something about the diction and overall structure and direction. The seesawingbetween casual and not-so-casual is not working very well here, but i'm kinda at a loss about how to fix it. Suggestions welcome.]There are people who expend vast reservoirs of energy searching for their dream vocation, the One Calling that will help them fulfil their purpose in life. Some find that purpose in helping others, while others revel in the cut and thrust of intellectual challenge, and yet others find fulfilment in the creation of beautiful things.
i think i've found my calling. i could spend my lifetime doing the dishes.
This has nothing to do with a love of domesticity, a penchant for orderliness, or even a cleanliness fetish. It's about instant gratification, pure and simple. You start with a teetering tower of greasy, gunky dishes, perhaps with mashed-up pasta and fish-skin and gooey melted ice-cream clinging to the off-white porcelain, and proceed, plate by plate, spoon by spoon, to soap and rinse and dry, or, if you're too lazy for that, to soap, rinse, and tuck each plate snugly into its appointed slot in the plastic drip-dryer, before finally rinsing out all the forks, spoons and chopsticks in a clattering crescendo that climaxes in a foaming whirlpool gurgling down the vortex of the kitchen sink.
Then you scoop clear the sink of the remaining debris, scrub it vigorously with clean-scented, lemon-fresh Jif, and take a step back and contemplate the newly-washed dishes, each one glistening still and silent like an ancient Greek shrine, each one a testimony to our eternal struggle against the forces of entropy and our quest for beauty and grace. And best of all, this process takes little more than a few minutes, or over an hour at most, if you are washing up after a fairly elaborate dinner party.
Doing the dishes is a good way to make yourself useful at a party, especially when you haven't contributed much in terms of food-provision or entertainment. It is also a good excuse for zoning out after the exertions of an extended period of social interaction, when you feel that your stock of jokes and small talk has run dry and when your facial muscles start to ache from all that smiling. Even regular, everyday dishwashing has its rewards: it allows you time to collect your thoughts and sieve through the events of the day, sorting them out and finding the links between seemingly disparate ideas and occurences - all while doing something useful and essential. Best of all, you get the satisfaction of seeing the fruits of your labour almost immediately, and oh! what a contrast between what comes before and after - making this the most immediately gratifying of household chores, and probably even more immediately satisfying than most of the work we do in our professional lives.
When i set up my own home, one of the things that is definitely not going to be on the list of kitchen-appliances-to-be-bought is a dishwasher. Never mind the potential savings in terms of time and energy - i cannot do without my daily dishwashing spa-treatment. The convenience may just kill me.
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posted by eothen @ 10:54 PM
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