Signposts

It’s tough to survive 4 o’clock on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon.

You know, that feeling of blankness and lostness that comes over you, and you wonder, who am I and what the hell am I doing here?

The real trick of life is to survive the mundane.

Go out of town for three weekends in  a row. One weekend, you see the new Griffith Observatory and marvel at the exhibits with a group call ChristiansHikingfortheLord.com. Fantastic.

The next weekend you spend in Bakersfield listening to bluegrass jams. Cool.

The third weekend you go snowcamping with the Sierra Club, a singular experience. What a blast.

Meanwhile, you are running from the mundane. You know it’s out there. Ordinary time. Chores and duties that simply must be done. They have no special stimulation. They aren’t wonderful, transcendent experiences.

They demand to be done.

You become aware of time: Inexorable, undramatic. Simply passing.

And you think: The majestic, transcendent freedom I experienced yesterday in Yosemite has evaporated into forced labor.

Is there a book called “How to be a slave and Love It”? And if you read it and followed it assiduously, would it  make you a happy, content slave?

Because we have all come to believe that there is a proper way to live every moment of life. I’m not talking about morality here.

This is not on the level of ethics.

This is on the level of aesthetics. How do I have a meaningful, life affirming experience all the time?

Is there a meaninful, life affirming way to do your laundry? I haven’t found it yet. Throw the damn clothes in the machine, slop in some soap, jam some quarters in the slot and get it done.

It’s a hell of a long way from going to the latest exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, or taking a class in Balkan dancing at the Ashkenaz in Berkeley, or camping on the rim of Yosemite Valley in the snow with El Capitan looming across from  you.

Dramatic. Iconic. Awesome. Stupendous. (A slightly weary search for superlatives)

But try to have the same experience doing laundry. It simply must be done, unless you want to descend into the misery of reeking homelessness.

You are enslaved to the need for clean clothes. It has you by the balls.

And yet, what if you saw somebody doing laundry in a movie?

Well, then, here we may have the correct way to do it. Notice the facial expressions. The studied carelessness. The contemplative stare. The smooth insertion of quarters. Or not- let’s say the angry insertion of quarters, the screamed obscenities as the actor flings his clothes violently about it a fit of petulant rage (though always done self-consciously)

Then you go do your laundry, and you think about every move you are making: Are you doing it well, like said actor?

Everything must be done well. You must laugh well, cry well, talk well, think well, suffer well.

It’s the tyranny of well.

True freedom would be to do your laundry unselfconsciously. Or better yet, do it with a bunch of other people who are doing theirs at the same time.

Then, the stupidity of trying to do everything in an aesthetically approved manner would probably explode.

Which is why when I do laundry, I’d much rather do it in a laundromat or a communal situation, because then I am absolved of the lone solitary pressure of doing it just so.

I can see that my fellow man hates doing laundry as much as I do.

And they see me. Without speaking, we comfort one another.

I might even enjoy doing my laundry, God forbid.

Or not. There really is no “approved” way of doing  laundry, just as there really is no aesthetically approved way of muddling through a thousand and one situations in life that we have to deal with.

You suck it up and get through it.

If you can survive 4 p.m. on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon without blowing your brains out, you can survive anything.