The Tiniest of Foes

 Our bodies seem to be battle grounds. One one side we have our immune system and associated allies and on the other, organisms that are out to get us. I can't imagine there is any intent on their part to do us harm but harm they do. I suppose it's a fight for resources: We have substances we have garnered from our environment, using effort and biological processes and they, the pathogens, want some of that but we are are their environment and it's the easiest way to get what they want.

For four days now, something has been troubling my digestive system. I will spare you the unpleasant details but suffice to say it is not a pleasant way to lose three kilos. Any attempt at eating causes abdominal pain and the symphony of hydraulic special effects from my middle is quite a conversation piece. Whether it was the ill advised fast-food "Louisiana-style" Chicken Sandwich I had in Oxford at the weekend, some detritus flung from the undergrowth by my strimmer into my face or merely a transmissible virus I picked up at a dance I really couldn't say. But I feel bloody awful and the probability is that this is caused by some organism I almost certainly couldn't even see with the naked eye. A number of them, even combined into some kind of community large enough to pass the threshold of infection in my seemingly poorly-defended constitution would still be too small to see without a microscope. Is this not humbling? Our hubris would have us think ourselves so adept at mastery of our environment but, as recent years show, some agent so tiny it requires optical instruments only readily available in a laboratory in order to see it can evade our control and render us miserable or even dead if we are unlucky.

I am not that unfortunate (at least, I hope I won't be. It's been four days and my recovery is open to interpretation). I suspect in a day or two I will be right as rain - an oddly topical and puzzling simile given recent weather where the rain has been decidedly not right by dint of its extraordinary abundance. 

So, thanks to Mr Van Leeuwenhoek and his marvelous invention, we are now able to know the nature of our adversaries when previously we blamed our physical ailments on "bad air", evils spirits, imbalances of the humours or witches. And now we know: In cases such as this, check the hygiene rating before you buy. Or wear a full-face visor when you strim. Tiny enemies lurk unseen everywhere.

Whoosh! goes the feather Duster!

It's an itchy-scratchy kind of feeling; A sense that some of those mental rooms that haven't been visited for a while need the doors and windows thrown open and the cobwebs brushing from the ceiling. It's always strange to me that spiders collude with dust to create those grey, insubstantial threads. These wraithlike strings hang down sometimes almost to your head if a feather duster or vacuum cleaner is not regularly applied. The shame of noticing a ceiling-spanning filament becoming an almost diaphanous grey fabric across to corners of your rooms is almost painful. It's enough to prompt imagined excuses to judgmental observers who, looking up from the coffee I might have made them, frown in disapproval at the neglect this house is subject to. How does this happen in such an unobserved way? I didn't see any spiders? And if they were there, how did particles of what, presumably, used to be myself and my clothing, end up becoming so ubiquitously incorporated, even in regularly frequented rooms?

And so it is with the mind. Why write? Well, it's the entry into the unused space; The visiting of a forgotten spare room, the brandishing of the wand of the Dyson. It's the waving of a cane coated with chicken feathers across an expanse of magnolia emulsion paint to reveal the feelings of immense relief and virtue. Well, I hope the rooms of the mind are a little more flamboyant than Pantone 7499C. I think I'd like to imagine my mental environment with a bit more vibrancy than that. Purples perhaps, or on an sunny day, primrose walls with eggshell-blue picture rails. Well, I don't have to look at it all the time, do I? It's a spare room, after all!

Alas, right now, the doors are shut and the curtains are drawn so the decor is all rather irrelevant. I have no requirement to enter. Other rooms require my attention more urgently, even if they are boring to occupy. Even so... As I type, I feel the light creeping in. The act of accessing this webpage was the tentative opening of the door. The first typed phrase became the throwing open of the curtains and, well, it's quite hard to see what colours the walls are under all this dust but I think I like the results. It's vaguely familiar and there are interesting objects in here I had completely forgotten about. The mundane can eat up so much of you.

Reaching up with a brush, it seems clear that the cobwebs are easily cleared. It's a trivial task in fact. A vague wave and order is restored. And so it is with the mind. It doesn't take much to banish the accumulations of quotidian grime and the layers of dust. It just has to occur to you to do it. And as with the physical chore of going around the house, just looking up and sweeping away the signs of neglect, so it is with the upkeep of the intellect. So many other commitments make demands upon our attention. The quote for Mrs. D's hedge-cutting, the seed order for my sessions at a local school for the learning disabled, paying the parking ticket I picked up last week. It all takes time and mental energy. Not to mention the actual physical fatigue a manual job produces. Carrying heavy pots and landscape sleepers up and down steps for hours and digging numerous holes for plants does rather take it out of you. Sitting writing is far less appealing than a crafty snooze in the armchair after a day's work.

But oh, how shiny the surfaces are when the detritus is banished! How light and airy and accessible it becomes! All I had to do was spend some time on it. It's not really an indulgence. It's actually essential maintenance.

Yes, this is something that needs to be regularly undertaken, even if triviality results. I feel better already!