Sleeping with Cabbages

I cleaned my bedroom, and now I'm anxious, in fact, so anxious I didn't sleep well last night in anticipation of having to tidy. I likely would not have done it with the same alacrity and thoroughness if my landlord didn't have an appraiser coming tomorrow. He's remortgaging the house. So I cleaned. I have a slob history. Outrageous messes achieved seemingly effortlessly. I slept with a cabbage for several days once not knowing it was hidden under the covers. I think I was on my way to the kitchen to make coleslaw--then paused. After things fell apart in early 2001 and apart and apart for several years, my sleeping with cabbages habits became even more pronounced. I seem to have an idea that if I live with chaos then if chaos comes, it won't be such a step down, such a sudden steep slope to nowhere. I protect myself as I can even if it doesn't serve me. Tonight, I told my "itemness," as I call her, that I'm not just turning over a new leaf, I'm turning over a new tree. "Life is both boring and dangerous," Edward Gorey, the illustrator, once said. "It's dangerous because at any moment the ground can open up beneath you, and boring because that hardly ever happens." But when it does, sirens may never sound benign again. In 2001, on the plane, before I knew how depressed I was, the man next to me kept handing me kleenex and glasses of water. All the way from Maine to Seattle. I think of him. I think of what came after. My sister at the airport. The feel of her Norwegian sweater against my face. One step after the other. And now, I am here. Alive and well in this beautiful room. Beautiful clean room. Life is both boring and dangerous.