A small window of time

is all I have to sneak a Zephyr through to you today. I have a project underway so large, so daunting, so long overdue, and I’ve finally found the verve to begin. This is a miracle, nothing less.

The project is cleaning our house.

I want to sit and tell you all about what a deep thing this is underway. This is an exorcism. I mean, I think it’s going to be. You know how they say that your surroundings are a reflection of your state of mind. Well…we haven’t been well. Let’s say that.

I want to sit and talk to you about shame, and how you can get your house to hold your shame for you by doing absolutely nothing, and then the shame will take it from there and make itself into material heaps, big huge dusty ones, and the shame heaps will do their job and block you from thriving, just the way you want them to.

Uncomplicated wishes for our own thriving seem like a given, don’t they? Well. They’re not.

The heaps will also help you keep people from being close to you. If you wouldn’t dream of inviting someone into your giant freaky shame show, it’s hard to have someone over. People are lovely but perhaps they’re terrifying and if you let them get close to you, they’ll know you, and if they know you, you know what might happen because it’s happened before a few times, and you don’t want to have that happen again. People from afar, that’s different. Afar is great, as long as it’s pretty far.

There are people out there—maybe lots of them?—who have normal, fresh, clean, pretty dwellings and normal amounts of shame, and also maybe I’m dreaming about that. Not about the houses. I think many real people keep their dwellings nice. I’m just thinking, what’s a normal amount of shame and does anybody have that?

But there are definitely people out there who have decided to love and trust the other people, who are letting people know them and bringing them in close, right into their houses. I know because I’ve seen them on TV.

Lately I’ve been bingeing the absolutely perfect series Better Things. The whole show is on Hulu now, the series just ended, and you must run and watch it if you haven’t. I have five episodes left, treasures I will blow later this very day after I clean some more. Pamela Adlon, my new life hero, plays a single mom of three named Sam Fox who’s a working actor in Los Angeles, living across the street from her aging, narcissistic mom. Iconic character, Sam Fox, all salt and spice and juice and vulnerability. Fuck Don Draper and Tony Soprano and whoever. This one. This is the one. Everyone in the whole cast is spectacular.

A major character in the show is Sam’s house, too, which is a perfect extension of Sam herself. The walls are full of art. You get a long, loving sequence in nearly every episode where Sam is cooking something in her wondrous kitchen, chopping and dumping ingredients into things and whoozhing the blender and stomping around and talking to herself. The house has problems because it’s a house. It’s not a perfect house. It’s an alive, witchy, fucked-up, loving, beautiful house, a house to be proud of.

I’m cleaning my house because this show makes me want to do the things I have to do. *That* is witchcraft. It makes me want to care for myself and for everything in my care, letting everything be as hard as it is, even kind of getting into how hard it is. It makes me want to do the dishes. It makes me want to do the dishes.

A window’s opened in me where I want to let myself live well. I’m thinking about trying thriving. This is new, no joke. So I have to go, everybody. I have to keep cleaning. I talked to you longer than I meant to. Go watch that show.

If you missed it, The Weekly Zephyr is going to continue to be a free newsletter for everyone but I’m offering the option now to support the WZ with a paid subscription. You will miss no Zephyrs if you don’t or can’t become a paid subscriber. Sharing the Zephyr is one great and free form of support! However, the flood of gratitude I’m feeling for my paid subscribers and your impact on our lives here tells me that I’m going to do a little something outside the normal WZ for you from time to time. Treats, surprises.

The first special paid subscriber post is happening next week and it’s not a surprise: The Met Gala is on Monday and I’m going to do a red carpet recap. (This is a thing I used to do that the people did enjoy.) The theme for the 2022 Met Gala is “Gilded Glamour and White Tie” and we shall frolic about this together. The regular Zephyr will appear on Thursday as usual. The special edition will arrive on Wednesday or Friday, depending on how extensively discussable the people are.