She is having a clear out, purging her life. When she is done things will be spare, honed, ready. She is sifting through piles, setting her life in order. When she is done the wide open space of morning will welcome her as she rides her trajectory towards clarity and purpose.

The house will be uncluttered and she will rise early for yoga, stretching with contentment on a mat in the living room. There will be the satisfaction of Pilates and hand weights. A candle and incense await her practice of prayer and contemplation. There will be room in her life for these things.

She is having a clear out, purging her life. When she is done it will be spare, honed, ready. She will keep her tax receipts up to date in the filing cabinet and her banking in order, noting the cashflow so she always knows where the money has gone and does not wake fretting for explanations. Smooth colour coded columns will note her financial safe-keeping, marked with pens which she will not lose because they will always remain in one place.

She is having a clear out, purging her life. When she is done it will be spare, honed, ready. In her wardrobe she will have colours and textures for each mood and season. She will always know what to wear, her accessories will be of a piece and her tights will not have holes in them and her socks will match and her life will feel like an outfit without even trying.

She will take garbage bags to the Op Shop respectfully labelled so that rags can be rags and socks stay together and the stuff from the rest of the house is in different boxes and the insane jumble on her loungeroom floor is not simply repeated from the boot of the station wagon, but is sorted into something which makes sense and can be handed on.

She is having a clear out, purging her life. When she is done it will be spare, honed, ready. She will read through old diaries extracting pearls of great price, she will write poetry and do her Morning Pages and follow the Saint Ignatius Examen and she will read The Age fully and not just the letters. She herself will write letters and send them to politicians and her writing will be useful and she will believe in it enough to send it to publishers and journals but not so much as to be besieging and she will attend her writing classes and stay up to date with her homework and set time aside for creative work and keep a notebook for new ideas which she will carry with her and add to each day, jotting them down as she waits for friends to meet her for coffee in cafes which have wireless reception so she can check her emails and keep up to date and empty her deleted items folder.

Her computer will have clearly labelled and findable files and filters which avoid unwanted internet traffic and even screen her home phone from people who ring at mealtimes or at any time of the day pretending to do market research but flogging bogus holidays. And when she rings Optus or anyone for assistance she will get a real person to help her without having to press hash or start again when she puts her account number in wrongly and she won’t have to say in one word why she is calling because by the end of the week she will have cleared all the junk out of her life and will be entitled to speak to a human.

And she will have a Country Pantry; a simple affair. She will be homespun, like her Great Aunt, who milked her own cow and churned her own butter and made shortbread for folks who would call and find her rosy-cheeked with arms full of eggs and grapefruits and apple blossom. And the jam jars will be rinsed ready for use and she will fill them with home made jam which she makes with her family from fruit from the earth and they will give jam gladly to their neighbours whose children will skip in the street, plump with the happiness of jam and unfettered by thoughts of obesity.

And she’ll remember how to look after the maidenhair fern by keeping its feet wet and how to dry hydrangeas and keep them bright blue in borax and something else she can’t find in the laundry cupboard but will when it’s cleaned out. She is having a clear out, purging her life. When she is done it will be spare, honed, ready.

So after the laundry she’ll defrost the freezer and become vegetarian because it’s better for the environment and besides the meat will go off since it takes quite some hours to dislodge that much ice and it will be simpler to live on chick peas so long as she remembers to soak them overnight which she will because the washing will be done and she won’t get distracted by pulling it in from the line when it’s threatening to rain because it hardly ever does anymore.

When the washing is put away she will get to the linen press and sort out the towels so that the door will close properly and the same with the sewing cupboard where she’ll finish mending the clothes that she loves which only need a few minutes attention and some matching thread. The rest she will ditch to the Op Shop in one of those respectfully labelled bags so it is not like she is just dumping her junk on them.

She’ll clear out the bathroom cabinet and wipe the smears off the shelves and throw out the unnecessary potions because she’ll feel so well and on top of things that she won’t need the flower essences or the homeopathics or even the medications. She’ll have a massage a month and a swim twice a week and a ride every day and the dog can come too and he won’t misbehave or leave hair on the couch or get into the compost and make himself sick and have to go to the vet. And her husband and children will miraculously conform to shapes that are convenient to her life of spareness and solitude and company when she wants it. These things she anticipates with the gladness of one embarking on a purge.  A cleansing voyage, casting off oceans of junk and gliding into a new life.

Julie Perrin © 2007

This story appears in the Visible Ink Anthology of 2007