Ode to my laundry

Finally, last night got around to prepping clothes for London. We leave tonight so i really couldn't have put it off any longer.

Realized that the washing machine, first of all, was not sending any water through, so the clothes i had been worried about sitting damp for two days were perfectly dry - dry and still dirty. (I know I turned it on, because i heard it go through the whole noisy cycle the night before and even had to shut the door to hear the TV.)

So in the spirit of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, i decided to calm down, think about it, and solve the problem myself. My plan:
1 Send the sheets through again. Maybe something weird happened.
2. Motorcycle Maintenence: the power is working, the machine is on and turns and spins. So. The problem is that the water is not getting into the machine. Pull the washing machine out from the wall and fiddle with whatever I find there. Hmmm.

So following step one, I sent the bed clothes through a second time and it worked! But there was water all over the floor. But i didn't want to stop it mid-cycle. So sopped it up with flannel jammies and crossed my fingers about the flat downstairs.

Still realized that with no dryer, not much hope of clean clothes for London - especially since the load i sent through was just a bunch of sheets.

I've had to resort to a Launderette, which i don't mind. I've got kind of a thing for Launderettes really. The Launderette is like a metaphysical crossroads for transients, hostel dwellers, people without appliances and people like me with temporary breakdowns in machinery and forward-planning. Like they're some kind of weird crossing point from one world to the next, like the seashore (land and water), mist (water and air) or midnight (day and night).

It's a place where strangers do something totally mundane and domestic together. It's not Christmas shopping, or sitting on the bus, or small-potato premieres which are equally stranger-filled and uncomfortable but expectedly public. And it's not like doing your laundry at home, where you rush about throwing things in and out and up on racks in between the rest of the mundane and domestic things you have to do. Because there is nothing else to do - except sitting-still restful things like reading a book, or the newspaper or writing in your diary or thumbing through trashy magazines.

In the Launderette, you walk in and start pulling out your literal dirty laundry in front of people you've never met. That's an expression that could go both ways. Talking about your personal problems in public is like showing people your dirty knickers. But showing everyone your sweaty gym clothes feels just as personal, as unavoidable, and as emotionally adventurous as telling near strangers about your drunken domestic or the argument you had at work.

And anyways, continuing with the metaphors and analogies - the other people at the Launderette couldn't give two hoots about those suspect stains. They're busy staring at their own drab unmentionables tumbling around and around. Soak, froth, rinse, repeat.

Unfortunately, the launderette by my house only does 'service washes' so i just have to leave it there for the roly-poly white-haired couple to do, and don't get to soak up any of the atmosphere myself.

hearts

You know how sometimes you get fixated on a word or phrase and just keep dropping it into conversation over and over? But then it's hard to tell if you're really overusing the phrase, or if it's just that you've noticed it so now it's growing in volume and you imagine everyone around you is going mental and imagining the supreme satisfaction of slapping the words right out of your repetitive face.

Well, my little niggling catchphrase of late, has been 'how do you feel?' It seems to me i'm asking that of everyone these days. Not just sick people, but colleagues explaining their workload to me, bosses telling me about objectives and work plans, boyfriends and friends telling me about their work days.

I suspect it was brought on by a friend who is having to work through her hard time, so when i ask how her day was, it's not good enough anymore to hear about the lost files or endless meetings because that happens anyway. The important thing is the sub-text of how the lost phone number reminded her of someone else, and the whole working day is coloured in this thick sludge.

Maybe i've gotten so used to it that now i feel compelled, not just to give my boss's emails a cursory glance, but to ask them 'How does your priority list make you feel?' Your excel spreadsheet isn't doing what you want it to? How do you feel about that?

I wonder if all these people are secretly happy to be asked, so they can just whoosh let a little of the air out. And this is like the secret magic phrase for unwinding them, unravelling them, picking out the knots.

Or maybe they're all thinking shut the %$£** up, you touchy-feely rubbernecking bloodsucker.
Gosh. What a lot of pent up hostility.

5 years

Is anyone else surprised that it's a whole 5 years since 9/11?

I can't believe it myself. Kind of for selfish reasons. It's just weird now how fast time passes. A whole 5 years seems like yesterday. And like everyone keeps saying, it's one of those moments that everyone remembers where they were or what they were doing - like Elvis dying (my friend remembers his mother having to pull the car over because she was crying so hard) or the Kennedy assassination.

I was just starting my writing college course in Calgary and sleeping rough at a friend's house while i looked for an apartment. She called me from work and told me to turn the television on right away. So i did, and it was about 9 am so I saw it all unfold on television like one of those disaster movies. And when I got to college, the foyers were all filled with televisions and 24 hour news feeds. There were bomb threats and rumours that Calgary was in danger because of the oil headquarters.

I was waiting for my then boyfriend to hitchhike/sneak across the border to visit me and i had no idea where he was. (He was that type that could be anywhere.) So maybe he was in New York. They announced that the borders were basically closed. So that was it. There was no way he was getting across. But then a couple of days later he called to say that he'd kayaked across the border the night before.

And they said that all air transport was grounded indefinitely. But that night we were sitting on my friend's back porch drinking wine and we heard a plane fly over. Was it the bin Ladens being evacuated to Saudi Arabia?

So much shit has happened in the last 5 years. But at the same time, nothing really has. Just a series of meaningless suicide bombings and random wars that have accomplished nothing but take up all the news. The only thing that makes it real and pertinent to you is the longer queues at the airports, the crazy new passport regulations, threats of UK id cards. The other stuff is real too, but bizarre because it's like violent video games or movies. They've lost the power to shock.

I can't explain why I've become...

I've just sent an article proposal to Chatelaine, the biggest magazine in Canada, and it is so brilliant i feel like i must be lucid dreaming.

And now, just like any other Miss Chatelaine, i must scurry around my apartment, scrubbing all the corners, in preparation for my Champagne Bellini party tomorrow where i give away all my clothes and books.

Stylish, generous and earth-caring. It's the Chatelaine way.

kisses, darlings!

Do I like this?

I've been exposed to some ambiguous arts and culture lately.

First, Platform a play about a French civil servant who becomes obsessed with sex tourism, falls in love and sets up a travel agency specializing in sex tourism to Thailand. It's sometimes shocking, sometimes titillating and sometimes really boring. Just like porn. In fact there was lots of porn in it which was kind of embarrassing because we weren't in a dark little theatre of the absurd kind of venue but a big velvet-chair, gold-railinged balcony kind of theatre with lots and lots of well-dressed white haired ladies and gentlemen. So the opening...ahem...with 10 minutes of nothing but a girl with legs akimbo and a supporting cast of fingers, fists and other implements (it was on film, thankfully) was a bit funny. Because you couldn't help thinking that most of these people would never, ever have seen porn before. I wonder what they were thinking.

The annoying bit was that the play was in Spanish with sub-titles so you spent a good deal of time frantically reading the many many words and then darting back to watch the actors act the words, or have sex, or give blowjobs or whatever they felt like doing. (Which was mostly to have sex and give blowjobs)

I wasn't sure if i liked it at first. I was fed up with all the reading mostly. But i've been thinking about it and it was quite good actually. Especially the naked woman who, never had sex with anyone, but wandered about delivering poignant soliloquies, playing the piano, singing and sometimes dripping yoghurt down her chin.

I don't think it's anti-Islam, like some of the reviews (a fundamentalist suicide-bomber attacks the brothel). I don't think it's pro-sex-tourism, but it didn't really seem very anti-sex-tourism either. Just made them seem hollow, and pitious. De-sensitizing. So however you felt about sex tourism before, you came out feeling nothing much at all. Like nothing could really shock you anymore.

The other thing i'm not sure about is a new videogame called 'Bully' by Rockstar, the creators of Grand Theft Auto (GTA). You have to run around your school hiding and trying not to get beat up by the bullies who have baseball bats and garbage can lids.

The child groups all think it's atrocious and want the game banned because it mocks all the children who are suicidal because of bullying. So they're going to call it Canis canum edit in Europe, meaning Dog eat dog. But then of course, all the controversy is bound to boost sales.

Basically, i think its shit. Just like its shit that you can pick up prostitutes and murder them in GTA. You could say that it will make bullied children feel empowered because in the game they can win and beat up the bullies with baseball bats. But will it make bullying seem like even more of a game to bullies?

That's too simplistic obviously. People don't do what they see on TV or what they hear in lyrics or act out what they do in videogames. But it's also simplistic to say they have no effect at all. I'm influenced by nearly every single thing i've read or seen. I take it in, internalize it, roll it around in my mind for awhile and view the world a little bit differently because of it.

And if they put it on a stage and we got to watch a bunch of 14-year-olds kick the shit out of someone, maybe even kill them, then would it be art? Or would everybody feel better about it then - bullies, bullied, prostitutes, sex tourists - because its just something that happens all the time. Why are violence and sexual violence so trendy and sexy?

I don't like it. I'm still thinking about why.