Mopping up a messy week

Looking back over the mess that was this week, I can't decide where to locate it on the continuum of messiness from aftermath of child's birthday party to zombie apocalypse. It makes a difference, because let's face it: the cleaning products that work on Play-Doh won't be much help when you're swabbing up entrails.

What kind of mess is this? I see bird droppings and dragged bones, flashing feathers that light up the sky, bright white rue anemone blossoms sprinkled around the woods, columbines popping up all over the front garden, pollen clogging my sinuses, roaches invading my bedroom, rain graying my days and thunder rumbling my slumber. 

I hear dogs yapping incessantly at 2 a.m., a great horned owl hooting at dawn, students reading their wonderful poetry to rounds of applause, a literature student saying "Maybe that's why my generation hates poetry," a writing student saying "I just don't like it" (about everything), an advisee insisting that he intends to take a particular course online even though it's not actually offered online ("I want to take it online," "But it's not an online course," "But I want to take it online," "But it's not offered online," "But I want to take it online," and so it goes, an infinite loop of illogic).

This week's mess smells of leftover pasta with chorizos, homemade ciabatta bread with hot-pepper jelly, droopy daffodils starting to rot in the vase, jelly beans, chocolate eggs, and the sour sanctimony of a colleague who thinks I'm a phoney (and makes me fear that it's true).

I see confetti everywhere, or maybe those are remnants of bills torn up and tossed aside in a huff, sprinkled amongst the random messages: invitation to my granddaughter's first birthday party (already?!), fan letter from distant scholar who thought my article was peachy-keen, message from a friend who's just earned tenure at another campus (hurrah!), massively multiplying e-mail chain regarding curricular issue only tangentially related to my work, sticky-note reminding me to contact the woodworking dude and the piano tuner and the faculty marshals and the Indian food truck, and right in the middle of it sits a big greasy chunk of broken tractor that will cost an arm and a leg to fix but with all this rain we'd better go ahead and fix it before the grass grows up to the eaves-troughs.

A year from now (or 10 or 20), what will matter from this mess? The students who read their marvelous poetry offset the students who hate poetry or literature or everything, and the fan mail and good news offset the snark and bureaucratic bumbling. That leaves the flickers and my friends' successes, and the fact that I refrained from strangling anyone, even those who may have deserved it. (Especially those who may have deserved it.) It's a middling sort of mess after all, and the good news is I won't need to mop up any entrails.