Scourge of the Tunnel People

There is an open grate that connects the ceiling over the stove and the floor in the attic where Nancy lives.  Before I go any farther with this, let me say that I am not allowed to go into the attic because Nancy has a syndrome whereby unless something is in plain sight, she will forget it ever existed.  Consequently, every possession, every scrap of paper, everything she reads and wears and uses or will ever read or wear or use unto the end of time is displayed in plain sight on a chest or a bookcase or draped over a chair or on the bed or on the floor next to the bed or hanging from something or propped in the corner or on one of the 13 steps leading up to the attic, and Nancy fears for my emotional and physical well-being should I ever encounter this sight. (I am a minimalist born on the cusp of Virgo, goddess of the obsessively tidy.)

So we communicate back and forth through the grate.  Me hanging over the stove and yelling upward.  Nancy on her hands and knees yelling downward.  It's odd, but it works.

What I am faced with every day, however, is Nancy's art room which is just off the kitchen and must be traversed if one is to get the garbage from under the sink to the garbage can in the garage without carrying said sack of garbage through the living room and the library and out the front door and down the steps and around the side of the house and through the gate and past the grape arbor and patio table and down more steps and around the Peace Chapel to the garbage can in the garage.

The first couple of months we lived here I had to squint my eyes till they were almost-almost shut and sprint through the art room lest I catch a glimpse of the chaotic clutter in piles and piles and piles and PILES on every surface.  No one reading this who has never seen Nancy's art room can even begin to imagine what it's like.  AND YET, the woman knows if the teeniest scrap of anything has been moved even a speck's worth.

Lately the art room has become more of a challenge.  Nancy has a gallery show coming up in October and she's creating new art -- new art that requires more mats and more frames and more large bits of this and that which are now propped up against the already existing PILES.

"Ohmygod, what if I'm turning into one of those tunnel people?" Nancy wailed last evening when Judy said there's so much stuff in the art room she has to walk sideways to get through to the back porch.  Nancy was referring to stories we've all read about old people who die in their homes and when someone finally discovers them they find 50 years' worth of newspapers stacked so high and so deep all that's left is a tunnel from room to room.

A distinct and scarey possibility.