excerpt on a clothesline

dealing with a constant barrage of dirty clothes is a universal human activity except, of course, for some lucky people in remote, tropical places who don't have to wear any clothes at all. in the warm weather it can be an inspiring sight to see a colorful (or not) display of drying laundry (ok i'll speak for myself.... i, at any rate, am a little weirdly inspired to ponder laundry) perching and flapping on lines like some sort of unusual upside down bird (bat?) species, especially when the garments are hung in an innovative manner. grab a pair of binoculars—only kidding—and take a look.

laundry on clotheslines puts the personal on display. it is both interesting and startling to see someone's belongings, often intimate belongings, draped and exposed out-of-doors for everyone to behold. after all, people inhabit and bring to life these otherwise innocuous bits of fabric—they work in them, play in them, sleep, love, die in them. clothes really make up a great part of who people are; personalities can be detected in them. are they bargain basement threads, ones with brand names—amazing that some people will only shop for very specific brands and no others—or ones with fancy designer labels sewn inside?

i always seem to be doing laundry, even with just the two of us at home, and the dirty clothes really start to pile up after we've been away for a while. there's the laundry i should have done before we left but didn't, and now there's the laundry from our trip that's falling out of our suitcases and backpacks onto the floor—and i even washed clothes while we were away. where does it all come from?

why do our clothes seem to get dirty so quickly, and are they, in fact, really that dirty—like we're lumberjacks, farmers, car mechanics or lobstermen or something....those people have a good reason for all their truly dirty clothes—or are we just too tidy or too picky about our clothes? a little obsessive/compulsive clean?

well, i think (hope) we're just typical/normal clean people. anyway, i have to stop now and throw in a load.