In the past, I have considered Raw to be an appealing word. Raw food is healthy. Raw carrots crunch. Raw Broccoli stands up rather than swoon and go brown at the tips. Theatre in the Raw is sharp, new, unpolished in the best sense. To be raw is to be natural, maybe even gifted - with raw wit; raw power; raw talent.
But then there was this: Raw Sewage. In my basement. This is, of course, revolting on many levels. My children have been playing on a sub floor inches above a cesspool. My mother-in-law slept there, with her partner, for a week. Not to mention (and here I will mention) - the semantic concern. What alternative sewage was on offer? Braised?
Having cleaned up, we now face the inevitable tearing up of floor and dismantling of a finished basement to get at the plumbing. Given that we have just recently finished our work on this house, after months of chaos, this feels like, well, a raw deal.
For sport, I decided to seek solace in the dictionary. Almost invariably, some can be found (especially if the dictionary is big enough). I found it. Informal terms: "In the raw" - "In the altogether" and then, hallelejua- this: Bare-Assed.
Finally, a term I can live with. I have bare-assed sewage in my basement. At least, I did. It's gone now. I can picture it going, like a happy bare naked two year old waddling down a path, arms flailing, getting ready to wreak havoc. Somewhere ELSE.
Years ago when I lived in a shared house on Niagara Street (crawling distance from the Wheatsheaf Tavern) something burst under our house and somehow every time our neighbours flushed their toilet their raw sewage would end up on our basement floor. I would take turns with my housemates hosing a stranger’s poops down the basement drain. I’m wondering if there is any consolation in knowing that the raw sewage in your basement is your own and not some stranger’s? This house also had the added bonus of backing onto a lead reclamation factory. The soil in our yard was badly contaminated with lead. We also had a darkroom in the basement. Between the lead, the silver, and the poops I’m guessing the poops were the most benign of the nasties we were dealing with. Oh yeah, we went by my old neighbourhood not too long ago. The lead factory is gone. It’s been replaced by a City run daycare.
ReplyDeleteCheers, Irene