cleanliness

emptiness is loneliness and loneliness is cleanliness and cleanliness is godliness [and god is empty just like me...]

this post actually has nothing to do with the song "zero" by smashing pumpkins, but i like that quote. so there.

anyway, there are some things in my life that i like to be very clean. some of you may laugh at that, as i don't wash my hair particularly often, or shave more than twice a week, or wash the soot from china's pollution off my balcony more than a few times a year. but there are those things i like to clean, and things i like to be clean.

  • windows
    daisy came over yesterday and forced helped me to clean my apartment. since the weather was so nice, we made a deal that my cleaning would be my balcony/windows. these windows, and the floor, have been caked with a layer of soot from all the dirty cars and factories in china. when i first came here, i cleaned it twice a week or so, but it became unbearable because it just kept coming back. but i wanted to be outside.
    we got a squeeegeee and some windex, and i started cleaning. and holy moly. do i like cleaning windows. it is instant gratification. dirty here, clean as a whistle here. all because of some fancy blue soap and a weird rubber thing. amazing.
  • my electronics
    if you touch my lens, or my monitor, i will honestly consider killing you for several seconds (or minutes. or if i really don't like you, i may consider it until the day i die). some things i can't control, like the fact that my apple, 'a', 's', and space keys are all wearing down to the matte plastic.
  • photographs
    i don't like pixels. grain can be cool sometimes, but only if intentional. i don't want any issues with focus, again, unless intentional.
    i've been spending too much a bunch of time organizing my old photos and tagging their location and faces (iLife '09 is great!), and looking back at old photos, i'm appalled with myself. years ago, to save space on my iPod, i went through all of my photos and took the "premium" ones out. i stored the other photos -- the blurry, pixellated, duplicate, etc -- on my external hard drive. at this point, these "premium" ones are the only ones i use. and i can't believe, at one point in my life, i called those "premium". the only reason i won't delete them is because i don't have any better ones to document the experience. but still. it kills me.
    similar to clean is "organized". i like keeping stuff organized. photos, music, movies, tv shows. if it's messy, i'm tempted to throw the whole thing out and say "oh well" the next time i want to find something (unlike my piles of receipts and papers i have everywhere on my desk at any given time)
  • trains
    i love you japan. and germany. sorry, chicago. you'll learn soon. by "clean" here, i mean both clean, not damp (like the bart in san francisco), and beautifully elegant both in scheduling and ease of use. oh man, i love trains.
  • writing utensils
    i think of this kind of like my electronics. the best thing for you to do is to not touch them. i'll gladly burn $100 on a pen if it writes as clean (and no smudging) as i want it to.

i suppose that's it. i really wanted to just write about photos and windows, but somehow got carried away.

February 22, 2009 @ 3:37am . 66 views . 1 comments

comments:

I get what you mean. Especially with the pen. And the dampness of crappy trains. However, your hair does get a bit unclean at times.

Will | February 22 @ 3:56am