little house of horrors

Words cannot express.

There are simply times when, true to the legacy founded at Babel, expounded upon by Derrida and poeticized by Eliot, words fail in their enterprise. Language in all its power, in all its beauty, in all its subtle connotations, cannot always signify what the subject intends.

And words cannot capture, cannot render, the combination of horror, disgust, repugnance, anguish, and rage that clench in the gut when a girl, going innocently through her closet in the morning to find a clean dress, finds instead a dress blue and fuzzy with mold.

This has been the pattern, though, the last few days in The State of Denmark (wherein the rot was supposed to be metaphorical). As I've torn into cupboards and drawers, as I've drawn my belongings from their niches to pack them away in their boxes and bags, I have, more often than not, found those belongings in a state of confounding, fuzzy, blue-mold decay. The leather dog leash I was saving for no good reason other than someday I'd like a dog. My favorite, least fashionable, ugliest barn coat. My red dress. My Ann Taylor suit pants. My UNDERWEAR.

And ladies and gentlemen, these things were not lying on the floor in a state of neglect. These things were not positioned where any moldering would be justifiable, and for which I might be found culpable. They were in cupboards. They were hanging in my closet. They were neatly folded up IN DRESSER DRAWERS.

I am now livid, wrathful, toward the house. I have NEVER seen anything this disgusting in my LIFE. Not on my own territory. Not for no reason whatsoever, with things folded, picked up and put away, except that my house habors an unreasonable hatred toward me. (After all, I've taken care of it better than any tenants have recently.) Stupid house.

This really puts an edge into "going out with a bang." I've been joyful, excited, euphoric, about my return to my (natal) state and my (natal) soil, and now I'm also viciously anticipating abandoning that horrible moldering hole of a house.

In five days I will celebrate the victory of survival. Meanwhile I'll be doing a lot of laundry in hot water, and drying it on high heat, at the despised local laundromat to stave off any future sartorial decay.

DisGUSTing.