Clutter

by Christa
(Phoenix, AZ)

Clutter clutter is everywhere I see and suddenly I can't see through it anymore because it is so clutterful, like a butterfly with wings that don't mirror one another, or like a piece of bread that looks like a sausage. I don't know if I've ever seen a piece of bread that looks like a sausage but that probably doesn't mean that bread can't be cluttered. You know, The Virgin Mary has shown up on bread and many adored the bread as a result, the same way that people hold on to their possessions - trinkets like rotting Christmas ornaments made of popcorn and floss - old hand-me-downs that will never fit you again because, let's face it, you've stopped exercising. But we still accumulate trinkets and clutter because we think that our lives are richer for them. But I don't know. I really don't know. If. For example. Clutterlessness is such a bad thing. It would help us stringtogethersentenceswithoutsaying UM all the time and it would probably make our hard drives run faster. If only there were an archive everywhere around us for us to throw our trinkets in there, just to know they were there even though we'd probably forget about them in an hour. Maybe that would help. Or not. Because we'd still hold onto the notion that somewhere out there was a bunch of crap just waiting for us to access it again. You know what I'm saying? Do you even hear me through the television and radio station and tickers going on everywhere in the world? We thrive on clutter, I think. Like food. Food clutter. Cluttered refrigerators, cluttered purses, food in purses like they were refrigerators. I once stored a summer sausage (in plastic wrap, mind you) in my purse in case I was one day stranded on an island. By the time a year had passed and I hadn't been stranded anymore I figured, "well, hey, maybe I can get rid of the sausage now. or maybe... maybe this means that my day on a summer island will come very soon since it never happened before." And guess what? I still wasn't trapped on that island and I still had my summer sausage and it got greasier looking in its sad shrink wrap compartment and it started to get hot during the summer and the summer sausage atrophied into nothing more than a little turd-looking thing that I don't think I'd even eat if I HAD been stranded on a desert island. I don't know why we hold on to things that we never want to open. I don't know why we hold on to things that we never want to open because I don't think we even care that much about them as much as we care about the concept of having them. It gives us a strange false sense of security. It sort of validates us as people, which is strange because I don't think I look much like a wilted summer sausage. Do I? Maybe I do and all the clutter I wear is excellent at disguising my greasy allure. I probably smell like meat secretly but all the products I got for Christmas two years ago in that little bath set are probably covering me up with their sick chemicals. That's OK, though, because every time I wear the Sweet Pea powder I think of my mom and how she got it for me because I used to be her Sweet Pea. I think our minds look a lot like the clutter we store everywhere. I think my exterior is a summer sausage and my interior is nothing but a bunch of sweet peas and maybe a couple of swing sets that I used to play on when I was a kid. And maybe a couple of games of Cranium because I think about playing group games all the time even though I don't ever have anyone to play with. Is this clutter any better than my summer sausage clutter? Probably not. Well I'm glad I got all that out because I like to feel like I've defragmented every once in awhile. But somehow I feel like I've refragmented as well.