The Queen of Bohemia Cleans Her Father's House

It has been a while since I have written. Not out of lack of substance, but out of lack of capacity to express what has occurred in the past month.

I started cleaning my father's house. The house I grew up in. I also started taking Bikram Hot Yoga classes. Somehow I think the two are related. The house and my body.

I was at the Cordillera Spa and Lodge a few weeks ago in Edwards, Colorado giving a workshop, and I had a wonderful massage, swim, whirlpool, and I decided to sit in the sauna. I usually am reluctant to be in saunas or hot rooms or anything because it makes me irritable and claustrophobic. Somehow this time I loved the heat, loved the sweating. I felt like something deep was melting away. The detox. And the spa place was so beautiful. Ultra luxurious, but a not conspicuous. Just nice, remote, even though I could not help but wonder what the heating bills were on these monstrous houses dotting the landscape that remained unoccupied!

Unfortunately, the drive back was so stressful because of snow, overturned trucks on I-70 and I feared they would close the tunnel and I'd be stranded. Worse, it was return traffic from the casino towns. Major bummer. It took me all day the next day to recover. But then I started cleaning my father's house.

He said it was time. That I would be able to come and live there if need be. He has a third acre in east Boulder. A nice bit to grow a lot of organic food, our favorite past time. But of course I would have to tackle the mess that is his house. When my mother died, I helped him clean it out. The piles and piles of old clothing, junk in every corner, the clogging of the entire house, buried in stuff. That on top of it that it had not been cleaned in 30 years.

He said it would probably make his migraine headaches go away, let everything go. That and maybe the big blockage at his navel area. A large weight held there, probably from emotions but also too much chocolate.

We started in the hallway, where he uses cardboard boxes to fill up each with old bills, magazines, junk mail, odds and ends. He was afraid to throw anything away. So we went piece by piece, paper by paper. I had ordered a big roll off for all the stuff. We just started dumping it, and recycling some, because he says he gets credit for the weight. But we filled up the recycling bin in a matter of hours, and it only comes once every two weeks. So piece by piece we went. I even found the Liberace autograph my mother said she had and had not found the first time I cleaned out the house when she died.

I had made a box of items that could be stored. My father's biggest problem is simple disorganization. Zillions of items just scattered around the house. I went in this storage area to put the box there. Mice had gotten into his end of the world food supply or wheat and what not that was there. It has been there since 2000. I saw two dead mice in traps, screamed, and dropped the box I was carrying, which upset another, untripped mouse trap. The box fell to the floor, which was covered in mice feces. I screamed again. I wondered, am I able to really clean this place out? It's so overwhelming the mess, the filth. The emotional layers there.

I went to my first Bikram class and made it through. I dripped with sweat. I felt dizzy at times, but did pretty well. Afterwards I was exhilarated, like the best high i've had in a long time. Natural, gorgeous. My skin was glowing. I had energy. I signed up for the two-week special for $25 bucks. Price is right. So I went again, felt better and wasn't dizzy. Again, dripped off sweat, like layers and layers of emotions and negativity and fear. Afterwards, felt great again. It was impossible to feel negative. I could deal with my father's house. I had to.

I came to my father's house again on Halloween. It was all abuzz with a friend of his who was a professional house cleaner. She was helping him go through tons of stuff. I was amazed they had cleaned out the back dining room area, which used to be the living room before the garage was made into the living room. But the back room was just tables piled high with tons of papers and stuff. She removed it. you could see the floor, which was previously covered. You can now see the original orange and yellow shag carpet from 1973. Although dust fills all the corners. Julia, the housekeeper, vacuumed up the dust, which I'm usually covered in when I help clean, sneezing the whole way through. Huge progress was made.

Trick-or-treaters came by and I dished out candy. I was amazed that kids come up to this house, since it's so run-down on the outside too. Maybe they think it's spooky, or dare each other to go up there, or maybe they are just greedy for candy. A Rotor Rooter truck was outside on the driveway too, blocking the way, because sadly the concrete in the back sank down so much because of a lot of rain and because the builder was cheap and didn't set the concrete correctly and it crushed the sewer pipe. So the toilets were unusable. Julia and I thought it was symbolic. THE SHIT CAN'T GET OUT.

So I went to a Third Bikram class. Sweated out some more. I haven't drank alcohol in many weeks either in a gung-ho attempt to cleanse. Went to a Shambhala meditation class. I can look at the shit clearly. I can see things arise in my mind. I know it's there. I can choose to get swept up in the shit, yes, I do sometimes and I pay dearly for it. And other times I can let it go. Is that what being human is about?

Somehow, though, seeing reality can be intense. It can also get a little boring. Or am I covering it all up again? Do you ever break through? Are you ever completely cleaned out? Or would you be dead? In reading Becker's The Denial of Death, it's about realizing how intense life is, that we are really half earth and half angel. Our bodies complicate things, even horrify us. We make up myths and religions to get around the death thing. But die we do. And to face death, and reality, is heroic. And that our society doesn't really offer us, especially youth, any opportunity to be heroic, as we barely face death anymore. We just watch it on TV and gawk at the body count piling up in the headline news. We cowardly wait in the shadows at some horror of life, hoping it won't happen to us. But it does happen to us. All the time. And somehow cleaning that out and really looking at it, to not deny anything of yourself, the filth in your father's house, the gunk in your body, that is good. You love it all. Every dark corner of it.

I wonder what the next hot yoga class has in store. And when I will find the courage to clean my father's house again.