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Showing posts from March, 2015

The laundromat

I'm in a laundromat. When I was 9 years old, I always went to a laundromat - I lived in an old apartment, how else was I supposed to wash my clothes? It was an occasion nevertheless; we went, (usually in the evening, when the sky was light enough so that you could see in the distance if you squinted, but dark so that people's faces were obscured save for the orange glow on half of their skin - or at least that's how I remember it) loading into the car the plastic white and blue baskets filled with white socks turned brown on the soles and sweaters camouflaged in thin dog hairs. The smell is the same. The smell of lavender fabric softener that was strangely far from lavender-smelling, lemon-scented floor cleaner, and a faint tinny smell, like sterling silver or metal machinery. I think of the different ways different people make decisions. Some are calculated, some logical, some prepare and deliberate so intensely that the actual deciding of the matter is no longer importan

The elevator

This elevator has twenty-three buttons that shine with an almost bioluminescent glow. Twenty-three buttons and twenty-three floors with people busying themselves in their apartments in this very moment. Like bees in a beehive; like ants in an anthill. The buttons are smooth, small, cold to the touch. Yes, the carpet is green and blue and beige with little diamonds lined up in a never-ending pattern of stars. Yes, the mirror is there, too big, making my head look tiny and deflated. Yes, the emergency stop button and the handrails are there (safety first). I can hear the elevator groaning as it crawls up the shaft, and if I close my eyes I can imagine the cogs and wheels and various other mechanisms stirring together, working perfectly, with stability, with an almost artificial beauty. But I can't shake this feeling, the feeling that something is wrong. Like something is missing. Doors, perhaps? he says.