SPRING CLEANING
I'm getting sloppy. I can feel it in my bones, which are somewhere in my body, bending where they should be holding strong, and I'm wondering if I'm not getting enough vitamins or something. But no, it's not that, it's not even old age. It's just the anticipation of getting out of town.

I haven't been off the island of Manhattan for more than a day at a time in almost two years. The time just catches up with you, makes you think in terms that have nothing to do with the rest of the world, turn you provincial and make you angry at the ever-increasing list of things about the world you no longer understand. It's fine until you notice it.

Well, I started feeling it around Christmas, and since then I've tried to clean up my life a little bit. Last night I did some Spring Cleaning (it's amazing what can be accumulated in a three-room apartment in eight months, and I moved in there on Kate's & my back in pretty much one trip, my point being that I had no material possessions barely at all), and I left for work this morning having to climb over piles of papers and assorted crud that I'll have to put back before those organized piles of 2002 get paved over with the already-accumulating detritus of 2003.

I couldn't wait to start Spring Cleaning until I could actually open the windows to let out the lemon and pine smells of all the environmentally hostile industrial cleansers I had left over from my temp job at Union Carbide*, so I'll be dreaming of chemically reconstituted tropical forests for the next few nights, little Gollums leaving vainly through my little pile of loose possessions in vain search for whatever Preciouses they may seek.

*To clarify: I never worked at Union Carbide. And if I did, I would never take chemicals from them. And if I did, I wouldn't use them in my apartment without being able to open the windows.