Dirty Clothes Blues

giant dipper, originally uploaded by camille94019.

I was trying to get myself to fold laundry today, but all I could do was sputter impotently at the endless piles that cluttered the floor. I wanted to see the bottom of it, but it was daunting, like the faerie tale pile of straw in Rumpelstiltskin (fortunately, no evil dwarves, but there ought to have been).

I didn't want to burst a blood-vessel over clean clothes (I'd rather save those kinds of melt downs for things that are really serious, like road rage) so I biked down to the abandoned boardwalk (always empty in the fog) to clear my mind of linens, dwarves, and the miasma of my own skull. On the way, unemployed males of various makes, whistled and catcalled me from their perches on the levees, bridge underpasses and stairs. At first I was annoyed, but then I realized its a harmless reminder that, yes, indeed, there is such a thing as gender, and, by gum, it deserves to be whistled about.

I arrived at the house slightly less cranky than I had left. The piles remain, but the rage is gone.

Saturday

the boardwalk


Saturday comes with a certain kind of languid nothing. Clean laundry makes a squishy carpet on my floor. The ringer on my phone is off.

I swam this morning and the only reason I mention it is because it does something to my brain. It is as if my Wernieke's Area and my little Broca are still lost in the bottom of the pool. I don't particularly miss them, they are loud. A feeling of shimmering contentment extends all the way to my fingertips. All urgency is gone. Minutes can go by, and not a single word registers in my head. Its been almost 11 hours since I got out and showered. I am only blogging because my room is such a mess (and it is slow going, staring at the screen for minutes on end while I try to remember what I was thinking a moment before).

Because it was our first sunny Saturday all year, I decided to go see the ocean this afternoon. To miss seeing it would have been a crime against the local gods. The languidness that I caught this morning was still washing over me in irresistible waves. I let the wave wash me out of the house and into the back yard where my red Raleigh lives. I slowly biked to the river, through the downtown, and moseyed to the boardwalk, where all the intersections were completely gridlocked because the evening temperature drop forced all the tourists back to the warm confines of their cars at the same time. I biked through the dog park, dodging mutts, children and elderly. I biked through the traffic jams. I had to stop myself from making "nyah nyah nyah" noises at the drivers, but only because it would have been too much effort. I biked through the drum circles and the dancing hippies. I biked up and down the wharf, squeezing myself through knots of strollers, up-ended boats and trucks.

Imagine a movie version of Richard Scarry's Busy Busy Town filmed by a German director and set in a small California resort town. Instead of animals, there would be people and the actors would have all done intense Method studies of their particular Busy Busy Town characters. The camera would move slowly, the dialog muffled, between various groups of people, all intensely engaged in their particular beach side activity, while following a cute brunette bicycling meditatively, on a red bicycle, through the entire scene. She would have been a cat in the book. It would be great-- laden with pregnant pauses that the astute audience member could fill with their own deep thoughts about life, humanity and interconnectedness of the universe.

NB-- During the course of writing this entry, I sipped on a cup of black pu-er tea, which really didn't do much for my ambition besides getting me in touch with my inner German Movie Director, a dubious benefit.