,
It’s a quarter to midnight and do you know where your
seconds are? The witching hour is almost
here and it’s the dawn of the lunar New Year.
Yet I’m down on all fours scrubbing the floors, spic spanning the grime
away. The washing machine’s a quaking, full
throttle shaking, extrapolating the dirt away.
Soap suds are a sliding, cake bars a flying and I’m up to my elbows in
mud. Muck, guck and a laundry load of
yuck.
The year of the Pig was minutes away from hoofing on in,
snorting and squealing with a truckload of meaning. Yelping to a close was the year of the Dog with
a last-minute snap of a yip and a yap.
A tidal wave of the not so cleansing kind was what first
comes to mind. So, let me dogpaddle on
back and fill you in on exactly how the year of the Pig squeaked its way on in.
So, with no further adieu, let me explain about what
transpired on the plain.
There’s neither rhyme nor reason to season this plate with
all sort of embellishments, let alone pepper it with superfluous adjectives, so
let me just come clean and say what I mean.
This is a tale of an end and a fresh beginning.
My corporate working life of 9 to 5 had come full circle.
28 years ago I embarked on a tumultuous career at a large
media conglomerate. Day 1 was Feb 4th,
1991, just around the time of the start of the Gulf War.
A gazillion trillion million years later on Day 10,220, I
signed my exit papers and severed all ties with the organization. As fate would have it, that date was Feb 4th,
2019.
I kid you not.
Coincidence? Synchronicity?
Or was that Fate stepping up to the gate?
So, what’s my point?
The walk home heralded in the year of the Pig with a Niagara
Falls tsunami of the disgustingly drenched and putrid kind. As luck would have it, two (yes, two!) ton
trucks barrelled on by, swilling sludge and a whole lot of spillage directly
upon me. I was now a mess, in distress
and stunk like a swine that had just bathed in sewer and seepage.
Was this a sign from the divine signalling that my time
working for a pittance of a dime was finally done?
It was the eve of the lunar New Year and my number one goal
was to scramble on home and scrub myself clean.
Wipe off the mud with a whole lot of suds. No time to contemplate this fortuitous event
as the Year of the Dog was coming to a close and it was imperative that I
launder my clothes.
According to ancient Chinese lore, one must neither sweep
nor do laundry on New Year’s Day, hence my mad rush to spic span the grime
away. It was bad luck to usher in the
forthcoming year in a home full of soot and dirt, let alone an avalanche of recently
acquired mud.
The minutes were ticking, the sludge was sticking and
bucket-loads of H20 had now flooded the bathroom floor. Could it get any worse? Slipping and sliding as if on sheets of ice,
playing cat and mouse with that ever so elusive bar of soap, I came perilously
close to an unanticipated hospital stay as I splish-splashed and almost gashed
open my noggin in the tub.
Yelp!
The bells chimed twelve and with a celebratory snort the Year of the Pig had squealed its way on in.
I was fresh as a daisy, shiny and new, eager to embark on
adventures anew.
So there you have it. No need to further elaborate and reflect on
the possible meaning of the early arrival of the Year of the Pig. It’s open to interpretation and a whole lot
of deliberation, but for myself, it symbolized out with the old and in with the
new. A newly found liberation with a
truckload of endless opportunities to now enjoy and pursue.
Next blog post in two/three weeks, the
weekend of May 19th, or perhaps a few days earlier. Stay tuned!
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| Piglet on a mission hoofing towards the New Year |
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| Spic spanning the grime away |
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