If you’re even THINKING about spackling or repairing a screen or even deep cleaning, STOP IT, because if The Emperor senses your shame we are all doomed and nobody needs that right now.
The Emperor is about our sense of place. When he’s in a good mood, you feel it in the form of security, stability, comfort, contentment with what you have and where you are. When he’s pissed, whether it’s your fault or not, you feel that too: Insecurity. Instability. Discomfort. Restlessness that verges on losing your wits.
You think it makes him feel good, when you flit around with a touch-up brush, squawking at his flaws? When some wall or windowsill that’s been perfectly livable as-is up until now, is all of a sudden unsightly, an embarrassment, a thing to fix? It does not. Nobody needs that. The Emperor does not want your criticism all up in his business, trying to make it look like people don’t live lives, here.
What he needs, right now, is for you to thank him for everything thus far. Thank him for still standing, for keeping you warm, for bearing witness to the best and worst of the life you’ve lived sheltered by these cracked, possibly dirty, perfectly lovely walls. He would not mind if you sat your ass on the couch right now. Maybe read one of your billion bookshelf books you’ve never actually read. The Emperor would not mind, at all, if you lovingly, gratefully, took shelter in your particular sense of place.
The Emperor says, be still and know that I am fine without you being all fixy fix-it right now.
ann rosenquist fee 