The final order

I am obsessed with making sure everything is in order. I have the grotesque conviction one day I will wake up and I will not be here. And if that should happen, I would like everything to be in its place - my house, my papers, my money...and my debts. I would like everything to be just right. My clothes must all ironed and stored in their place, ready to be discarded or distributed among the needy or the envious (that is what happens to your clothes - they are re-cycled downwards or sideways). My books should be properly classified so that those of a specific author or of a particular gender can be disposed of in homogeneous lots, or re-located to waiting shelves. My papers must be classified so that they can be perused in an orderly fashion and so that the answers to as yet unformulated questions can be found easily. My money must be easily accessible in transparent accounts and deposits so that it does not languish to the point of extenuation by default in an obscure balance on the bank's books. My plants must be healthy and vigorous to be adopted by new owners. And my furniture should be clean and polished so that it is the envy of self-appointed remover, as opposed to being discarded on the municipal coup or abandoned to become the home of cats and rats.

It is obsessive - but I have no intention of going anywhere. So I trick myself into finding a place for everything and putting everything in its place. I am surrounded by an orderliness that otherwise would not exist, by a neatness that is secretly pleasing. And I get a kind of sneaky joy from it - as if my alter ego took pleasure in nudging me to an extreme of order hitherto only a fuzzy intention.