FALLEN ANGELS

When I went to verify the Mary Shelley quotation I used in Thursday's post, I came across another that felt both striking and apt.

"The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil," she wrote in Frankenstein.

I don't like demonizing anything or anyone, so I'm not usually a fan of devil imagery. But this line really spoke to me, and in a way directly relevant to issues of clutter.

The part of each of us that longs for creative time, creative work, is angelic: powerful, pure, a thing drawn from the limitless skies.

When we don't nuture it, this powerful force doesn't die. Instead, it turns on us. Bedevils us, you might say.

The love for color, beauty, and abundance that inspires creative work transforms into destructive relationships with shopping or TV.

The desire for good tools with which to create new things transforms into a studio or office chock full of supplies or books—so full of them, in fact, that there is no room to do the work they were acquired for.

The passion and intensity that might fuel a novel, a play, or a piece of visual art transforms into rage, resentment, or a sense of martyrdom, or a flat, exhausted depression.

The curiosity that is intrinsic to all creativity transforms into endless hours of Web surfing.

Fallen angels; malignant devils.

The way to exorcise these malignant devils is neither to castigate nor to blame them.

It is to find the fallen angels each of them once were. To ask what dream or hope or passion or love each represented before we forced it "down to earth." To look through even our greatest messes for the feathery beauty of wings.

Somewhere in your clutter, I promise, you will glimpse them.