Spring-ish Cleaning

For reasons known only to my computer and Blogspot, previous attempts at publishing 'Spring-ish Cleaning' resulted in it appearing in microscopic type visible only to birds of prey and Generation Z.

I have re-written and re-posted it, hopefully in legible type.

The calendar is a liar. Despite its insistence that March has begun, it is 37 degrees (F) outside, with cold rain and persistent twenty miles-an-hour winds. The sky is as drab as a Soviet-era housing block.

A local TV station reports the 'real feel' is just twenty-seven degrees.

Displaying the impeccable sense of timing that has earmarked much of your life, you have chosen today to sort through your outdoor storage unit. Leaving the inviting warmth of your home and stepping outside is akin to being assaulted by an industrial-strength air conditioning unit after a hot shower.

Your genitalia is fortunate. They can shrink and draw closer to your body mass, minimizing the effects of the cold. Your extremities, hereafter known as evolution's victims, aren't as fortunate. Existing as they do at the outer edges of your circulatory system, they are the first to be assaulted by the brutish weather and can only hope for a death that is as quick as it is merciful.

Shrugging-off imminent foot and hand loss, you resolutely tear into the mass of half-forgotten possessions. There is a large plastic tub filled with audio and video cassettes never donated. On top of that rests a nineteen-nineties relic of automotive security, known as The Club. It is sans key.

You ruefully consider any remaining usefulness, and are briefly heartened when you realize that with the right-sized steering wheel it could again be of service. You are disheartened in equal measure when you realize this thought places you at the very precipice of hoarderdom.

You are rewarded for disposing of things in either the trash or recycling bins with an unending assault of porcelain-bladed knives disguised as rain, which lacerates exposed flesh. An army of miniature drones soon follows, depositing salt into each crimson aperture.

The initial sting soon morphs into a numbing, cold burn. The brilliance of this weather's sadism is revealed in the fact that it doesn't completely numb.

Next is a sullen stack of magazines. Carefully ordered from largest (Rolling Stone) to smallest (National Geographic), they resemble a pyramid; a triangular tribute to publishing no one is especially interested in—except you.

The writing, the photography. All carefully and painstakingly presented on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis. And then reduced to landfill. You ache. But not entirely because you're a sensitive aesthete.

Picking up a magazine requires the pressing of two fingertips against the magazine itself. As noted earlier, fingertips are an extremity. Also noted earlier, they aren't entirely numb. So the act of pressing them against a magazine opens the door to a pain you haven't experienced since Tatiana, a tall Russian blond with ice-blue sapphires for eyes and a mouth like ripe fruit, left you at the altar.

Blindly clawing through the pile, you uncover bags of charcoal. A container of lighter fluid. A butane lighter designed expressly for grills. There is a fleeting thought of setting something on fire, if only for the warmth.

There is an insulated tote bag from Sam's Club filled with all manner of ephemera: pencils, a tire gauge, brochures, a rack for holding mail and a cassette of Ray Charles' 1985 Christmas album The Spirit of Christmas.

Desperate for a glimmer of positivity, you salute the foresight that led to its placement in an insulated tote bag.

There is more. Hands not too numb to feel the tiny rubber spikes on the underside lift a set of salt-encrusted car mats from the pile. Fittingly, they belong to a car no longer in your possession. A creeping sense of hopelessness begins to envelop you.

An item with actual potential appears. A first-aid kit. You examine the contents. You remove a band-aid and attempt to peel the paper backing off. Your rapidly devolving motor skills make this impossible. Your brain is sending impulses your fingers are incapable of acting on.

Mankind can be grateful there is almost no chance you'll be called into surgery today.

You sigh. It is a long, mournful one. You sneer at the naivete which led you to believe this would be a good use of your time in a productive, Marie Kondo kind of way.

The wind and the rain and the cold and the suffocating blanket of grey skies are unending.

So is the pile in the storage unit.

There is a garden trowel. An impressive array of ice scrapers. A jug of windshield washer solvent. A container of Animal-B-Gon. And a clay flower plant—with dirt. You lift a half-filled can of primer. Its warning KEEP FROM FREEZING stares at you in mute, unblinking recrimination.

This is your breaking point. Those portions of your cerebrum still functioning inform you that this is a task best left for a sunlit spring day, when it could be construed as an invigorating leap forward, and not as punishment for sustained inaction.

With this ability to kick the can down the road, it is clear you have a future in politics. While not quite a closet full of skeletons, you do have a storage unit full of....stuff.

You still can't call it junk.