Settles into the walls of my soul like a mold stain in a room. Yet, rather than deal with the guilt, I apply the wall paper of denial over it. And all is good until the stain seeps through again. And so I apply a heavy primer and paint over the walls with a fresh coat of innocent white. And still, after time, the stain seeps through, each time having grown larger.

So I cover the stain with a wall-hanging, perhaps a tapestry, something, anything, to hide the blot and then I rearrange the furniture so My back is to that wall and I pretend it has gone away. Yes, property can be bought cheap on DeNial but the taxes can kill. And I ignore it while the stain grows, inching outwards in area, digging deeper into the walls, a horrid mixture of green and black that putrifies until all the fresh cut flowers and store-bought deodorizers fail to make dent in the stench and, in a fit of desperation, the room is emptied and the tapestry burned, the stained wall ripped apart to find the source of the guilt and, more importantly, the atonement which will remove it from the room entirely.

A task so long delayed is, perforce, more expensive and harder to perform and yet, once the stain is removed and I am back and snug in my room, I wonder if I will let my next act of guilt fester so long.Guilt

Out, damned spot! out, I say!--One: two: why,
then, 'tis time to do't.--Hell is murky!--Fie, my
lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we
fear who knows it, when none can call our power to
account?--Yet who would have thought the old man
to have had so much blood in him.
Lady MacBeth, Act V, Scene i

Settles into the walls of my soul like a mold stain in a room. Yet, rather than deal with the guilt, I apply the wall paper of denial over it. And all is good until the stain seeps through again. And so I apply a heavy primer and paint over the walls with a fresh coat of innocent white. And still, after time, the stain seeps through, each time having grown larger.

So I cover the stain with a wall-hanging, perhaps a tapestry, something, anything, to hide the blot and then I rearrange the furniture so My back is to that wall and I pretend it has gone away. Yes, property can be bought cheap on DeNial but the taxes can kill. And I ignore it while the stain grows, inching outwards in area, digging deeper into the walls, a horrid mixture of green and black that putrifies until all the fresh cut flowers and store-bought deodorizers fail to make dent in the stench and, in a fit of desperation, the room is emptied and the tapestry burned, the stained wall ripped apart to find the source of the guilt and, more importantly, the atonement which will remove it from the room entirely.

A task so long delayed is, perforce, more expensive and harder to perform and yet, once the stain is removed and I am back and snug in my room, I wonder if I will let my next act of guilt fester so long.Guilt

Out, damned spot! out, I say!--One: two: why,
then, 'tis time to do't.--Hell is murky!--Fie, my
lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we
fear who knows it, when none can call our power to
account?--Yet who would have thought the old man
to have had so much blood in him.
Lady MacBeth, Act V, Scene i