what happens when we make things easier

In the recent past women weren't doing the big, visible work because they were running the big-but-invisible, constant machine of living. The work that we now leave to other (invisible) people or machines. All the work that connects your life to your living - the food and shelter and safety - seems to have disappeared, and it's given us the chance to contemplate/create the sublime, but of course all our (more numerous?) problems came out of that box, too. Living primarily in/through the parts of your brain not driven by hunger or fear creates all kinds of complicated things (thoughts). I think about this because a lot of my time is spent making food and cleaning for other people, and it's both great and horrible. Cleaning is preferable to a lot of things in my life because perfection is objectively achievable (on the everyday, perceptible scale of clean), which may be a messed up attitude but it's so true. I can wash something until it's visibly and tangibly perfect, and know that I did a good job and that anyone else could tell too. I get a kick out of washing dishes and floors that I never can out of, say, photography.

We could be walking and washing and chopping with our own muscles burning our own food, instead of burning something else far away, out of sight, to get it done while we watch tv or a computer or a book and twist up and wither away into depression and existential dilemma. And by we I mean, of course and always, me.

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