A Few Consoling Words To My Vacuum Cleaner

Yes, I know, it’s not Saturday, the day I usually take you from your dark closet to clean the rugs. I thought I’d have a friendly chat with you and reminisce, ask how you’re doing, your health, and let you know how much your services are appreciated, and how you’ve lived up to everything said about you the dayI bought you, placed you in the car trunk and sped you to my home for domestic work where you’ve lived up to all my expectations, always with an obliging ready compliance. Nothing pricks my conscience more than, after a morning of diligent work, I have to return you to the darkness of a claustrophobic utiliy closet crowded with so many household helpers with unpleasant and toxic fumes, and not once have you ever complained, and to my shame and negligence never once did I apologize or offer you even a perfunctory thank you, leaving you to yourself and your thoughts, holding only a bag of sucked up dirt filled with dog hair, food crumbs, and who knows what else you found lurking in my rugs, until your services were needed again. Solitude, of course, can be a blessing and has advantages when it has purpose. It’s indispensable to poets and writers who need an atmosphere of quiet to think and meditate. Even medieval monks, confined to small stone cells, required solitude. How else could they have produced such magnificent illuminated manuscripts? Or, as one monk did, combine his Christian theology with Aristotle’s philosophy, though less cerebral monks, and others, overwhelmed with the monotony of repetitious prayers, penance, and nightly flagelations to combat the lustful flesh, as an alternative, spent hours without distraction calculating how many angels could fit or dance on the head of a pin.