Laundry
Laundry, 2020.
I began with an archive of dresses, left to me by my grandmother. Clothing, textile, what comes with the endowment of textile. When do we wear textile-- we keep clothes, archive them, assign meaning to them. Expectation of performance, behavior, accomplishment-- new, or used-- how do you fit into this prescription of existence-- or fail to-- and of body size-- and what does it mean to gift something that is adorn and protect the self. . And I think I will wear them-- what is the unfinished thought in the archiving of them? And what is the use of the fabric-- of anything-- if it isn’t being worn?
There is weight in the act of washing. It comes from terms of care, and self- care, and expectation. When washing oneself, the goal is to become clean-- but for who? By what standard? Washing practices vary greatly from culture to culture, despite the fact that it would be easy to believe that the idea of clean is one singular, universal concept-- it isn’t. Patterns of cleaning, and cleaning of self, of clothing--are revealing about the values and patterns of belief about cleanness. What are the parts of the self that we want to be rid, that we are supposed to want to be rid of? What do we retain, or forgo, in the act of cleaning? For these dresses, especially, there is loss, in the act of cleaning them, loss of skin cells, and dirt, and dusk. Risk, too, of shifting their delicate makeup into uselessness. Upon removing them from their respective ziplocs, one such dress disintegrated, turned into fragments of dust, in my hands. Had I left it in the bag it might be whole, or some semblance of whole-ness. In washing them, in wearing them, I risk their structure. There is risk, loss, in the cleaning of them, the preparing them for a new life of use, or waiting for it. There is loss, too, in the leaving them wadded up in drawers, waiting. Potential and kinetic uses both become loss, lack. There is no way to proceed fairly. I decided to treat the textiles as an extension of my body, when washing. There is something familiar in their fragility, exacerbated by stillness. There is no manual for caring for old things, or, at least, not these things. I washed them as I do my own skin, on my skin, dressing, and undressing, giving care to each piece, exploring it, damaging it; its value comes from its use, if only once. I am reminded with the vague memory of all of the times in my life I’ve had to bathe in creeks and rivers-- always fully clothed, even among naked bathers, and, invariably, startlingly cold. I wash these as myself, with myself; our clothes are but an extension of skin.
So then-- washing and hanging to dry, in the wind. I thought of all of the other times I’ve hung clothing to dry; once, on a monastery rooftop in the mountains of Lebanon, with too few clothespins to go around, and no shops close-by, to replenish. We would hang clothes to dry at night, and rush up in the mornings, in hopes that overnight, morning, they’d have not become light enough to blow away in the sunrise winds, or baked hard by the brutal, unmitigated sun. Or, at summer camp, when I would, inevitably, forget to pack enough underwear, and would wash them in the evenings and hang them in the trees, so no one would find them, and take down my strange installation at dawn, before anyone else woke, dry, damp. Public and private. Alternate selves hung out to dry. Visible cloaking over invisible bodies. A new horizon, six feet, seven feet-- and in my apartment window, twenty feet or more, above the earth, pinned at the shoulder,and drooping, tethered to the line but wanting to go, go, go into the wind like I once did. Maybe they feel the same sense of desire, of missing something, elsewhere. Loss by staying, potential loss by going. Infinite and indefinite servitude to the necessary reality.
And yet.
I began with an archive of dresses, left to me by my grandmother. Clothing, textile, what comes with the endowment of textile. When do we wear textile-- we keep clothes, archive them, assign meaning to them. Expectation of performance, behavior, accomplishment-- new, or used-- how do you fit into this prescription of existence-- or fail to-- and of body size-- and what does it mean to gift something that is adorn and protect the self. . And I think I will wear them-- what is the unfinished thought in the archiving of them? And what is the use of the fabric-- of anything-- if it isn’t being worn?
There is weight in the act of washing. It comes from terms of care, and self- care, and expectation. When washing oneself, the goal is to become clean-- but for who? By what standard? Washing practices vary greatly from culture to culture, despite the fact that it would be easy to believe that the idea of clean is one singular, universal concept-- it isn’t. Patterns of cleaning, and cleaning of self, of clothing--are revealing about the values and patterns of belief about cleanness. What are the parts of the self that we want to be rid, that we are supposed to want to be rid of? What do we retain, or forgo, in the act of cleaning? For these dresses, especially, there is loss, in the act of cleaning them, loss of skin cells, and dirt, and dusk. Risk, too, of shifting their delicate makeup into uselessness. Upon removing them from their respective ziplocs, one such dress disintegrated, turned into fragments of dust, in my hands. Had I left it in the bag it might be whole, or some semblance of whole-ness. In washing them, in wearing them, I risk their structure. There is risk, loss, in the cleaning of them, the preparing them for a new life of use, or waiting for it. There is loss, too, in the leaving them wadded up in drawers, waiting. Potential and kinetic uses both become loss, lack. There is no way to proceed fairly. I decided to treat the textiles as an extension of my body, when washing. There is something familiar in their fragility, exacerbated by stillness. There is no manual for caring for old things, or, at least, not these things. I washed them as I do my own skin, on my skin, dressing, and undressing, giving care to each piece, exploring it, damaging it; its value comes from its use, if only once. I am reminded with the vague memory of all of the times in my life I’ve had to bathe in creeks and rivers-- always fully clothed, even among naked bathers, and, invariably, startlingly cold. I wash these as myself, with myself; our clothes are but an extension of skin.
So then-- washing and hanging to dry, in the wind. I thought of all of the other times I’ve hung clothing to dry; once, on a monastery rooftop in the mountains of Lebanon, with too few clothespins to go around, and no shops close-by, to replenish. We would hang clothes to dry at night, and rush up in the mornings, in hopes that overnight, morning, they’d have not become light enough to blow away in the sunrise winds, or baked hard by the brutal, unmitigated sun. Or, at summer camp, when I would, inevitably, forget to pack enough underwear, and would wash them in the evenings and hang them in the trees, so no one would find them, and take down my strange installation at dawn, before anyone else woke, dry, damp. Public and private. Alternate selves hung out to dry. Visible cloaking over invisible bodies. A new horizon, six feet, seven feet-- and in my apartment window, twenty feet or more, above the earth, pinned at the shoulder,and drooping, tethered to the line but wanting to go, go, go into the wind like I once did. Maybe they feel the same sense of desire, of missing something, elsewhere. Loss by staying, potential loss by going. Infinite and indefinite servitude to the necessary reality.
And yet.
Laundry compressed.mp4The dresses, then, were hung in the windows-- to catch the wind. Kites, flags-- surrender to the state of unbeing, in my apartment. Once again, fully visible to passersby. Not the intention, but a necessary concession to accomplish dryness, lightness.
Once again, they are filters of air, and-- in the mornings, especially-- light. Would-be stained glass, a Holy Space in the absolute ordinary. Restricted space; there are no sanctuaries now-- at least, not that you can enter. But here, with the swollen linoleum and walls in need of patching, dropped ceilings, where my rent was late this week and certainly will be again--- remove your shoes. You are walking on holy ground.
My grandfather made stained glass on the weekends. Husband to the dress collector; both doctors. Workers of the body, but also-- archivists, makers. We have his supplies-- boxes and boxes of unfinished heavy glass,dragged cross-country to Virginia homes, to sit in wait of use. Small stained glass arrangements, too-- ordinary things, idealised. Cardinals, the sun, in tidy soldered frames for hanging. My parents always hung them in the hallway, over opaque walls, where no light could pass through. In the middle ages, stained glass was illustrative, a filter for light inward, preventative to looking outward, creation of the illusive holy space; illustration of a higher-- something. But how to make that space, that container, of the sacred. The dresses, hung to dry, are my makeshift answer to that call. Protection and privacy in one. Filter inward and blinder to that which is outside. O, but what a pleasant blindness.
For me, water is about loss. Once again, washing, rinsing; Baptism. You must be clean. You won’t be.
I was Baptised twice. Once as an infant-- or, rather- a far-too-big infant, new from a congregation that didn’t baptise infants, at four, with a pitcher of holy water dumped over my head, and a second time, as an adult, immersed in a pool. my sister, an informant of the correct size, laughed inconsolable when she was sprinkled. It was winter, and I couldn’t go to the river like the others had been allowed to-- but-- necessary, apparently. Neither congregation recognized the Other Baptism. There is, after all, only one Right Way to be clean. I have been asked to be Baptised again by my latest congregation; I’ve yet to comply. How many times can a body be reborn and maintain its shape?
I think water, for me, will always be about cleansing, about cycles. Tides come in, go out; it’s a rhythm. Gravity, wind-- geothermal energy. Salt and water; preservative, solvent-- but don’t drink. It will not preserve this body -- at least, not in life. I have friends in a village in Panama, who could get baptized in the Pacific Ocean, but cross their fingers in hopes they will be allowed to have the community pool. Chlorine, salt. Containers, all.
Kite and earth, pulled toward each other; tension, control, on a simple string. Earth, moon, tide-- pulled toward each other, and away, by gravity and atmosphere. In his fiftieth year, my father had a heart attack and needed a stent, to open his veins to blood. Open my veins, then, and let saltwater pulse through, like the tide-- slowly, and undetectable.
But do not linger, or look back---
Body, salt.
Once again, they are filters of air, and-- in the mornings, especially-- light. Would-be stained glass, a Holy Space in the absolute ordinary. Restricted space; there are no sanctuaries now-- at least, not that you can enter. But here, with the swollen linoleum and walls in need of patching, dropped ceilings, where my rent was late this week and certainly will be again--- remove your shoes. You are walking on holy ground.
My grandfather made stained glass on the weekends. Husband to the dress collector; both doctors. Workers of the body, but also-- archivists, makers. We have his supplies-- boxes and boxes of unfinished heavy glass,dragged cross-country to Virginia homes, to sit in wait of use. Small stained glass arrangements, too-- ordinary things, idealised. Cardinals, the sun, in tidy soldered frames for hanging. My parents always hung them in the hallway, over opaque walls, where no light could pass through. In the middle ages, stained glass was illustrative, a filter for light inward, preventative to looking outward, creation of the illusive holy space; illustration of a higher-- something. But how to make that space, that container, of the sacred. The dresses, hung to dry, are my makeshift answer to that call. Protection and privacy in one. Filter inward and blinder to that which is outside. O, but what a pleasant blindness.
For me, water is about loss. Once again, washing, rinsing; Baptism. You must be clean. You won’t be.
I was Baptised twice. Once as an infant-- or, rather- a far-too-big infant, new from a congregation that didn’t baptise infants, at four, with a pitcher of holy water dumped over my head, and a second time, as an adult, immersed in a pool. my sister, an informant of the correct size, laughed inconsolable when she was sprinkled. It was winter, and I couldn’t go to the river like the others had been allowed to-- but-- necessary, apparently. Neither congregation recognized the Other Baptism. There is, after all, only one Right Way to be clean. I have been asked to be Baptised again by my latest congregation; I’ve yet to comply. How many times can a body be reborn and maintain its shape?
I think water, for me, will always be about cleansing, about cycles. Tides come in, go out; it’s a rhythm. Gravity, wind-- geothermal energy. Salt and water; preservative, solvent-- but don’t drink. It will not preserve this body -- at least, not in life. I have friends in a village in Panama, who could get baptized in the Pacific Ocean, but cross their fingers in hopes they will be allowed to have the community pool. Chlorine, salt. Containers, all.
Kite and earth, pulled toward each other; tension, control, on a simple string. Earth, moon, tide-- pulled toward each other, and away, by gravity and atmosphere. In his fiftieth year, my father had a heart attack and needed a stent, to open his veins to blood. Open my veins, then, and let saltwater pulse through, like the tide-- slowly, and undetectable.
But do not linger, or look back---
Body, salt.