I cleaned my apartment yesterday - not just regular ol’ maintenance cleaning, but the heavy-duty, semi-annual variety. I flipped the mattress and aired the featherbed (no, that’s not what the kids are calling it these days). I used barely diluted ammonia to scrub away a summer’s worth of the greasy downtown traffic soot that made its way through the open window and onto my kitchen floor. I rounded up dust bunnies in places unseen and undisturbed since the last dust bunny hunt six months ago.

When I was done I walked through the apartment, admiring my handiwork and enjoying my temporary victory over the forces of entropy.

And then I ran my hands through my hair, and without thinking dropped the single strand that came loose in my fingers. Before it even hit the ground I realized it was destined to drift across the hardwood floor, picking up the tiny bits of wool I’d just kicked up walking across the rug, a dust bunny catalyst in a primordial soup of fresh lint.

It was an awe-inspiring, circle-of-life moment rather than a depressing reminder of the ultimate futility of house cleaning, which I believe can only be explained by the ammonia fumes.