Dusting

This weekend, I spent a long time doing something I specifically avoid doing: deep cleaning. I have a new home, and Iquitos is filled with many wild things. Cleaning is necessary.

In my mother´s first book, Crossing the Tracks, she refers to a process of careful considering a touching each object in a home. It´s a form of grounding, I suppose. Each object is picked up with reverence and “dusted”. Perhaps it is similar to what I have now spent many hours doing in Iquitos as deep cleaning. Maybe it is a way to remove the layer of grime that separates me from a new space of home. It means that each object enters the “ring” of your life, going from the possession of another life to your life.