messy

I’ve made a huge mess. But I like it and I’ll tell you why.

I come from an immaculate household so I’ve always had a generous side-dish of guilt with respect to neatness. My mother always worked in nursing; neatness was an occupational quirk. She always seemed to be cleaning and asking me – which is to say telling me in the form of a question – when was I going to clean the dishes, my room, etc.

But , why should you clean? When you’ve got better things to do. Since last week I’ve been thinking about cleaning my desk. I’ve moved flower pots, relocated piles to the floor and chairs and back. But I didn’t clean. And I felt bad. But then I realized this is beautiful. This is Poiesis, the Greek version of what I like to call making stuff up. I also like Heiddeger’s definition:

a moment of ecstasis when something moves away from its standing as one thing to become another.

 

You cannot get ecstatic or make anything in a void. You have to get messy.

And Life is all about making stuff. About doing, not organizing. You can always organize later when you’re tired. It does not take that much brain power to stack things up. But, it will take your whole brain, your sinew and your heart to make something worthwhile.

I’d like to start a collection of Beautiful Messes.

I will eventually clean my desk when I’m tired and have nothing better to do. But if I do anything interesting, creative, out of the box, if I follow my instincts and forge every idea into something concrete, if I do anything worthwhile, my desk will always be looking like a piled up mess.

I’d like to do a weekly round-up of messes. Send me your mess. A picture with a line telling us what you made while you were too busy to clean! OR if your mess cannot be photographed send me 100 words about it and I’ll post that along with the pictures. We will make a collage of Beautiful Messes. I will post the batch every Monday on the blog and on the Facebook Page so that you can inspire everyone else to get messy the rest of the week.

Your mess can be a work in progress, something you just started or something you’ve destroyed because…well, you made it and then you knew you could do better so you’re starting over. All good places to start. Come on over! oisercage {@} gmail {.}com

Beautiful details from a Beautiful Mess:

Translation: Let’s Get Dirty