Laundry
I didn’t learn how to do my laundry until I was in college. Before that, my mom would wash all my clothes for me. Our washer & dryer were in a room in our basement that was connected to an apartment that was built into the side of my house. There were walls and no doors between our house and the adjoining apartment so the only way to get between the two buildings was the laundry room. We owned the apartment and someone rented it from us.
Sometimes, when my mom wasn’t home, I would sneak into the apartment and look at our renter’s stuff - thumb through his mail, look at his magazines. Even then I knew it was something I shouldn’t be doing - something dangerous and scary. So I became afraid of the laundry room and by extension, I was afraid of doing laundry itself.
That adjoining room has come to be a metaphor - for the gritty place between desire and outcome - you want something (clean laundry) and one day it comes to you - but to get it, you need to thumb through someone else’s mail and look at their sad, lonely refrigerator.
This is Frankie. She’s probably 2 years old. A friend found her roaming the streets and we lucked out and ended up adopting her. On her first check up the vet said she was probably around a year old. Which means she spent a year roaming the streets. Sometimes when she’s sleeping, we will whisper in her ear “What sort of crimes did you commit before we found you?”
In the backstory I’ve concocted for her, she murdered her lover after he touched a piece of pizza she found in a dumpster. Which is how I’ll most likely die myself. At her hands.
Elephants

When I was a kid I got to ride an elephant at my dad’s friend’s house. Looking back on the experience now, I realize it was probably not a good experience for the elephants involved. I didn’t really enjoy the experience either.
I guess what that means is that our most memorable experiences are the ones where pretty much everyone is miserable.






