Locomotion of Laundry

All things began in order, so shall they end and so shall they begin again – Sir Thomas Browne

Bedding, always being displaced, you could say exiled, forms a line of bundles, refugees. Cloth which wound around the living – and preserves the record in its creases – only has to flop down on the floor to forgo its old life. Sheets and towels must wait for their ablution, taps to open, washer drum to turn. There’s no hurry. Everything is taken up and everything descends, tugged from the rubber cervix, treated to a midwife’s slap, each coming newly into being at the separation.

In the tango of its hanging, a shirt or linen that until this morning bore another body’s trace,

takes up position as a fighter, felon, dancer, tackler, striker, air-blown along the line. There may be occasional arrests yet piece by piece they are reshaped, redeemed in the perpetual lifting and laying-on of hands and so shall they begin again to enter every room.

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