laundry

Washing my clouds... clothes... in a place called Dirty Little Secrets laundromat in 24th st. by the mission in San Francis...ko. It's a usual looking laundromat although its great that they have wifi which gave me the urge and the chance to write as i set my clothes to the coin-op washing machine. It's been a month since i really did my laundry, I know... whatever... it's just one of those times when we say to ourselves... It is due. Pardon to those but I wasn't raised to do my own laundry which i say with a smile on my face but a question to my laziness. Why in the hell did it not occur to me that one day i would be washing clothes for myself? I thank you Bill Gates for the internet, laundromats has become a temporary office.

It's also a luxury doing your laundry in a cool neighborhood where there are good coffee shops and the better mexican restaurants in the city. From the laundromat two doors down is a coffee "take-out" called Dynamo and they let me have a taste of their coffee but opted on drinking a glass of "fresh" orange juice, which is quite a nice change from coffee and cigarettes. From inside the mat i am blessed with a view of the people outside and seeing the diversity with textures of hipster, junkie, local, rush, chill and a gift of sunshine from God.

I went into a psychle, a word i invented to describe the combination of two words "psyche" and "cycle"... the cycle of the psyche. I thought of the obsession of being clean from having clean to new clothes, french perfume smells which serves the opposite at times and the need to have a neat and tidy appearance. The list goes on and on to the ridiculous and to the genius of our own truth.

Laundry nowadays is big business too, from the washing machines and it's repairs through time, detergents, fabric softeners and to those poor people in the Philippines who had worked for the better off . People who'll pay them by washing their clothes usually by hand and doing their best to get a steady washing gig. All for the obsessive need to be clean.

In this world and the other worlds i ask "What is it to be clean?" It's a deep question swirling around like those clothes that i just had thrown in the dryer. They are hanging like clothes clipped in strings at your backyard always in the mercy of the rain. I remember those old movies with women washing the clothes in the river rocks, discussing technics on dealing with men who expect that they always have to do everyone's laundry amongst everything else.

And as i've exhausted all my quarters and realizing that being clean nowadays is also a matter of economics. The more clothes you have the more laundry you will have, the more money you'll spend. Then I thought of the phrase"cleanliness is next to godliness"... it's not godly it is only next to it and it cost money and money can be dirty a lot of times, give or take and that makes me wonder and ponder if i just have to invest in laundering my soul.