Progymnasmata

Last weekend I washed the all the windows in our house -- both inside and out.

It was a typical fall day in the North -- crisp-cold with bright sun and a pine-scented air.

I took off all the screens and "dusted" them outside by giving them the twice-over with my high-powered leaf-blower. Then I took my spray bottle of glass cleaner, a roll or two of paper towels, and small step ladder. . . .and went to work.

This project is the sort that I greatly enjoy: outdoors (mostly), repetitive, and symbolic.

Zen and Art of Spider Droppings
I've already described the pleasing air. So I won't return there. On to the windows! I start on the inside -- spray-spray-spray-spray-spray (five times), wipe in a square just within the rectangular edge of the window. Then back and forth across, lingering on the spider ****, hand-prints, and undermined specks of smudge.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. In a prefect, domesticated rhythm.

Then the outside. . .same pattern but each window's exterior is much more dirty than its interior. A layer of dust coats and blocks out sunlight. Loads of spider **** everywhere. The grim bird feathers from a poor chickadee or house sparrow or common veery who mistook the glass for air to its death.

I wipe all of these away.

The year's filth now clings to my piles of ammonia-smelling paper towel piles that betray my path around the house.

I clean up and put away the tools of my work. And when I return inside, the brief afternoon sun is noticeably brighter. . .and more pure for not having to be filtered though the year's filth and insect screens. The house is lit with a new and familiar fire.