Hoover Nirvana

Hoover Nirvana
I borrowed a carpet cleaner machine from Chef Roberto. Now he didn’t know what he was exposing himself to. First my giving in the French national sport, complaining and recriminating that the damn thing was too heavy and hard to handle, then guess what, you have to empty the damn bucket every ten minutes or so, and as each time the water was black, I figured it would take me a whole day to clean my carpets and rugs. But wait. La makina infernale is a Hooooover. And Hooooover made sure you get hooked. You push the machine forward and you see the water and soap soaking in, and it makes about the same soothing sound as inside a plane. As you push your jet machine along the lines of the carpet, you almost expect to hear the suave voice of a flight attendant asking you “Coffee Madame?”. Then you start being so concentrated on following those lines, you’re in a trance like state. Nothing else counts. You don’t see time flying. And Oh! The rotating brushes , that VROUM like the propellers of the plane seen through the window. I got so hooked that I came to consider the best part the one when you empty the bucket from the blackened water. It has something nirvanesque, orgasmic in it, to see all that dirt draining down the sink, then as you come back to your rug, to see the colors revived. Immediate gratification. The Mt Olympus of household appliances, that a few decades ago, were promising women’s liberation from chores. I don’t know about that part, though, as it did take me a few hours to complete the job, which left be back broken, ready to crash into bed with a body feeling like it had run a marathon. Lying down in bed, as I was falling into my (other) night life, I surprised myself wondering if I couldn’t have that heavy machine vroom vroom its rotating brushes over my back, providing me with a well deserved shiatsu massage that would flatten me out, leaving me as flat and stretched as a jelly fish drying in the sun on low tide.