spin cycle

Dude. I have been mis-er-a-ble for the past couple of weeks. For good reason, of course, but still. At this point I can't run away from the ick of it fast enough. Because it's gross. So gross. Like a big gob of slobbering Great Dane dog slobber gross. Curl your shoulders up around your ears and upper lip to your nose gross. Insides on the outside gross while kneeling in the bathroom from Trainspotting gross. Gross. Gross. Gross.

Gross.

Ever want to scrub your soul with a Brillo pad? Dip it in hydrogen peroxide and watch the bubbles go to work on whatever depressive germ's infected it? Zip it off like a religion-revealing wet suit and send it to the dry cleaners?

Wouldn't that be fabulous?

I should have listened to Mahatma -- I will not let anyone walk through my mind with dirty feet -- Ghandi and made people take off their shoes before entering my brain space. Because lately I've been feeling like I've been saddled with a baked-clay afro six inches thick. I'm a dirty-knoggined Bobble Jill. And I'm foul.

This week I'd begun to enter the dangerous territory of understanding the siren call of the hermit's life. Of the agoraphobe. Of horsey-people. I was beginning to see how a hip-high pile of manure, a Sappho-inspired fashion sense and a Pig Pen-suggested hygienic code could be fair trade for the insidious sadness, insanity, misplaced anger and insecurity that we inadvertently expel and ingest like a toxic respiratory cycle. I'd begun to get that horses could be better company than people.

Except that I really don't like horses one little bit. I don't like how they smell or how it's necessary to wear those silly ineffectual helmets when riding them. Or their scary, yellow teeth.

And I'm not down with eating bugs ala hermits of the Bible.

And I really do like the sky.

But I do want to feel shiny again. I want to feel skinny-dipping free and floaty. I want to feel squeegeed-windshield clean. And all the past week or so I've been struggling with myself and my grimy mood and wondering if a dash of Woolite might just do my lighter half right.

Still, as I write this, I hear my friend Eddie saying, "Life isn't hard. We make it hard."

And my friend Cherie reminding me, "Walk easy."

And my friend Potocki encouraging, "Shine on."

No true answers exactly. But no harsh abrasives either. Just a little gentle outside spin from some squeakily clean-footed friends.

And you know, my head feels lighter already.