Machines

I pushed my dirty laundry up to the laundry mat today in a shopping cart. I was literally airing my dirty laundry in public. I unloaded the clothes from the cart to the washing machine, dumped a generous amount of laundry detergent over the whole mess of clothes, turned the dial to full heat and made my way to the park to wait for the cleaning process to happen.

On a large root, under a tall tree, in the middle of a quaint park, I read The Painted Word, by Tom Wolfe. I learned more about the evolution of modern art, today, under naked branches, with the warm sun on my face, than i did durning three quarters of art history class in college. I glanced up from my book periodically to watch a girl and her dog play fetch. I was amazed at how excited the dog was to run after a ball and bring it back to her master...over, and over, and over again. I am sure there is a lesson to be learned from that sort of enthusiasm.

After a while I guessed my laundry was probably done spinning in hot soapy water, so i made my way back to the laundry mat. Time must have stopped for me in the park, reading my book and adoring that dog, because my laundry wasn't quite done (when is a load of laundry actually, completely done... probably never, there will always be micro particles of skuz clinging to fibers).

I had an encounter with the Penny Man while waiting on the steps outside. The Penny Man is a local crazy who comes door to door asking for pennies. One day, I didn't have any pennies but i offered him a shinny new quarter instead. He looked at me like I was nuts, telling me to keep my quarter, he was only interested in pennies. We shot the shit for a minute, but conversations about pennies only last so long. When things became awkward he said goodbye.

I put my now wet clothes in the drying machine and started home, but not before i had another conversation with a woman who was chain-smoking a cigar. She was really interested in Laundry mats and so we talked about laundry mats for about 10 minutes. I enjoy small talk about little things like laundry mats and pennies, although i am no good at it. But listening is fun. I walked home and put a chicken pot pie in the oven which is a heating machine. I ate lunch listening to Cat Stevens.