Laundry day

Jack Cornfield wrote a book called First the Ecstasy and the the Laundry. or at least i think it was Cornfield. and i haven’t read the book. but i know what it’s about and the title came up for me this morning.

Laundry. cleaning our dirty laundry. Dirtying our clean laundry. If we wear our clothes they will get dirty. If we live our lives, we will get dirty. Then we clean our clothes, aka  put our lives “back together,” only to mess them up again. and we wear our favorite ones over and over and over. And sometimes we save our “good” ones for special occasions. I used to do that quite a bit. I would buy something i really really liked, only to  wait a year or two before i would wear it because i didn’t want to wreck it. In life, was i saving my “good” aspects of life because I didn’t want to spoil them? Yeah. Kinda. In fact, i still do it now from time to time (but it’s different and I’ll go into that in a future blog, so if you are interested, feel free to remind me). It looks like this: I do all the “icky” chores, the “must dos,” before I go ahead and do the things i think will bring me more joy. And at some point, I ask myself, what is really bringing me joy? Is getting the icky stuff done more joyful than say, going for a walk? Playing my guitar? Doodling? Good questions that can only be answered in the moment. And that moment is an ever changing thing. Hence, the “moment.” 

Today is laundry day. My suitcase came yesterday with a bunch of clean, warm, clothes and a very warm sleeping bag. So now I will wash the dust from the soldiers that I have been wearing since I boarded that plane out of SFO, as well as the other layers that were so generously loaned to me by others. And the toilet paper. I won’t wash that, but I will return the remainder of the roll.

And last night, I was o-so-toasty warm. And today, the fog wasn’t rain. Just fog. So here’s to the ecstasy. The laundry. Both clean, dirty, unworn.