The Third Level of Cleaning

The Queen of Bohemia, when she doesn’t have her duties as the High Priestess, is back to cleaning her own house. This time it’s a deep clean. A purge, in fact everything must go. For the Queen is preparing to go out on a mission, and she must leave everything behind. All her castle barbecues and hoards of things. There she is cleansing deeply, from the inside out. And the more she strips away and cleans the outside, the more the inside is cleaned out, and the more powerful she becomes. Because the less material objects she has, she finds the more faithful she is.



It has been a whirlwind of activity. The spring has activated seeds long over due for germinating. I have spent the weekend tackling the dirty house, not just cleaning it but purging it. I have to get away from this complex American life, the traffic jams, the junk mail and spam, the mediocre pop culture, the stuff. Gilbert gave me a stern come to Papa talk about my packrat mentality. I defended it as an artist’s life. He said I was like my father.
Irked, but still firm in my artist self, I ruthlessly culled old books, bronze Buddha statues, my late husband’s items, corn on the cob dishes, clothing. I never want to spend another winter in Colorado again so out with the coats. I can’t believe I rearranged and reorganized completely my art space in the garage. I was aghast that mice had snuck in this unusually hard winter and gotten into the bird seed. And of coruse into the house. Hondo won’t sleep downstairs anymore.

I seriously plowed into everything, spurred on by the bird seed in the garage. The mouse poop covered a lot, and I thought, am I my mother? Is my place just as filthy as my father’s with the black mold in the basement? I had to let go of things. Just strip them down to basics. I want to live as simply as possible. Only the essentials. Not needing to upkeep furniture or dishes or things or most definitely not to upkeep a car. I want to walk to get my groceries, cook only with fresh ingredients. Live in a community. Where in the world could that be? Hardly in America. But I have filled the garage with tons of stuff for a future garage sale. I am making arrangements.
Tonight the kids and I ate out for the first time in a week since the return from the cruise. I had been getting used to eating only what was on hand in the house to use it up. All shopping will be around these food items. To actually practice some home economics and cook around staples.

I never had a mother to really show me how to eat. My mother’s cooking consisted of microwaving eggs, Doritos, boiled beef in a bag, or Banquet frozen fried chicken. For a while I was really into cooking for the whole family when I was a teen, but it was just things from a recipe book, nothing consistent and focused on a few staple dishes.

Slowly we have been eating better. As you pare everything away, if you get rid of all the stuff, there is very little to focus on: yoga, meditation, eating right, teaching the kids and being with them as family, love, travel, friends, gardening, art and music and literature and stories. How those simple things really make my soul sing, and also ache for that which has been lost in our wasteland of capitalism.

I’m exhausted. It’s truly the big purge, the big cleaning of the house. To finally be free of all the clutter, all the stuff. I’m thinking to do my Kripalu and Omega workshops on the east coast July, send the kids to their late father’s family in San Antonio for a few months, then we all go to Mexico in August where I have a training, maybe spend a month or so there, then head to an eco yoga farm in Argentina. And the winter in Montserrat.

I picked up a homeschooling book on giving your kids a classical education. I think, why not. I can be close to my kids and educate them in yoga and more, bring out the teacher in me. My sister Narada homeschooled four kids. Of course she’s a Krishna, but she’s very inspiring. I’m going to take the kids to visit them all tomorrow and go to temple and dinner.

I also have been thinking a lot about Jesus too. Like I’d like to incorporate Jesus into the yogic homeschooling. Joseph Campbell says you tend to return to the religion of your childhood, the first myth you were indoctrinated in. Usually I cringe or am afraid to say the word Jesus because it has so many horrible implications, especially with the sinister and sick Catholic church pedophile scandal. Evil! And naturally by being in Latin American countries you can get into the rhythm of the seasons with all the holidays and festivals, usually placed over indigenous traditions, so why not make them have an even bigger new-agy Jesus twist. It would be nice to focus on the life and acts of Christ, his personality traits and being a good human being, rather than the morbidity and torture of his death. Of course we teach that you are eternal and identical with Christ and ever lasting life, a sentence that could get you burned at stake years ago, but that’s the facts, Jack. Of course we’d have Buddhist meditation, Sufi poetry, and plenty of science to doubt all our mythology so that we may have the most perfect of faith.

I’m exhausted, but exhilarated. Spiritual transformation is about losing everything and gaining the soul.

I can’t wait to be rid of everything!