LIFE CAN BE MESSY BUSINESS

Rex Burress

The “Dirty Jobs” TV program has stressed a number of jobs as dirty, depending on what you think 'dirt' is, but some might call it 'messy,' as are most biological activities of a mucus nature.

Just about anywhere you look, you can find examples of messy business, whether organic or disorderly arrangements. You need go no farther than today's M-R article on “Worms in the spotlight” by Kyra Gottesman, a fine writer who has had her day with every-day messiness of household messes, which Webster's says is a confused, dirty, disordered state! A mess of rotten food is an example of the gooey kind of mess.

Aside from worms of any kind being quite messy, especially if squished, as in threading one on a fishing hook, or stepping on a sidewalk-worm during a rain, the very business of 'worm-farming' and tending 'castings', fertilizers, nutrients, and potting soil is tinged with dirt things. Most gardeners don't think of getting dirt on your hands as dirty. It's soil, although some call dirty clothes “soiled.” The worm farmer said they let the kids slide down the big piles of filthy, dusty, compost piles as part of a tour and the kids love it.

We know kids love messy things and love to make messes, especially in the formulative years [diaper doings, potty training, eating soft food, splashing through puddles, and scuffling dusty trails]! Sometimes those things are repeated in elder years [as in a man forgetting to zip up, or worst, zip down!] Well, after all, oozy life came out of the oceans say the scientists, and animals retained about 98% of the water in their bodies! Better go drink a glass of water! Who would deny that water can be messy? Consider those flood clean-ups.

Even though they call it a mess-hall where there are good things to eat, it's messy business cooking moist foods, and it's messy business washing dishes and connecting with the garbage cans.

The whole business of sex and reproduction can be pretty messy with lots of fluids involved, and all the processes of growing up--elimination, puking illness--just about every biological function--is wrought with watery messes. Manure. Have you ever passed one of those Midwest dairy farms? Disposing of manure and urine is a major job! Cow excretion piled up behind our farm barn, but we had a manure spreader!

Various art processes are fashioned out of some kind of tangible substance's whether minerals ground into paint, dusty pastels, chalks [remember blackboards and dusty erasers?], and gooey additives, while ceramics are whirled from clays that originated in soil compounds. There is a lot of waste in art creation; lots of paint going dry on the palette, lots of worn brushes, lots of paper and canvas scraps.

There is always a mess of leftovers left in the wake of sculpture, whether stone or wood, culminating in a pile of marble fragments or wood shavings and sawdust. Consider an Indian chipping an arrowhead from a chunk of obsidian. Ten thousand years later, you can know of their former presence by that pile of chips. The Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804 left a trail of mercury-tainted bowel movements clear across Western America! Manure and sewage systems is a major problem of civilization!

The climax of every mess is the arising of a beautiful creation--painting, ceramic, sculpture, wooden furniture, or any creative aspiration! Out of the chaos comes loveliness and meaning! Out of biological murky messes arises a beautiful living creature. There is no end of examples of messy creation, right down to the universe and flying particles and asteroids! Chaos in an orderly system!

Today's newspaper messy descriptions involves a bloody car wreck [most days], war killings [most days], warnings of striking deer on the road [200 people killed nationally in 2016 by striking animals on the road], flattened road fauna, and very saddening reports about millions of starfish dying on the West Coast in 2013—involving lesions turning their arms into blobs of goo. Life is messy business.

“One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas Day. Don't clean it up too quickly.” --Andy Rooney

“When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it's time for artists to make their mark.”

--Joni Mitchell

“Clean up your own mess [and there will be no litter]”--Robert Fulghum

“'Dirty Jobs' is a fun, simple little show with huge themes under it. For me, it's penance, it's redemption, it's a sweaty mess.” --Mike Rowe