back to the laundromat
After recently learning that washing your pillows could be a good thing, but soon after realizing that my closet washer/dryer didn’t agree, I pulled out the old laundry bag and went walking. It had been nearly two and a half years in my current apartment and two and a half years since I’d been to the laundromat to hear the Vegasish clang of twenty quarters in unison. Where I last left it, disintegrated foam mattresses were strewn about yellow terrazzo floors and middle age men parked idled outside, whistling when I dropped a sock. Not the best of memories, but that night wasn’t the best of laundromats. In the better ones, I found the best of nights.
Now in the next neighborhood over, and trying to dedicate myself to pedestrian environments, I walked the walk 4 or so blocks to a brightly lit operation in the dark headwaters of Blanco road. I’d always found this whole corner of Beacon Hill interesting, stuck between the tracks, industry, and a steep incline that constitutes the Hill. The laundromat is about as clean as they come though, seen through the spotless storefront windows. Protected from the crowds of Fredericksburg Road and the sins of McCullough, a skinny abuelita manages the business with tropical colored pants and a endless bottle of Windex.
I sat down, stuffed in my pillows to a giant front loader, and watched her glide back and forth polishing the dryer glass and wood panel walls over and over. Over the sound of her and her machines, the sound of a wall mounted tv tuned to Seinfeld reruns, and over that the sounds of an old Street Fighter II console playing its once familiar automated loop. Kids played hide and seek.
Over that, I read. I’ll hold myself back from a gushing review of a Pattern Language, mainly because I’m always a fan of my latest book, so I’ll just say it’s getting at what I’ve been going after. Somewhere within these cities, buildings, window seats, and country sides I’ve been collecting, there is a reason. Beauty and function stemming from a set of patterns, that luckily then combine into an infinite array of new patterns, lending themselves all to the complexities and contradictions that make a truly great anything. Or one hopes. I can assume that by the shear number of rules that they prescribe (253) that there are countless more rules to argue for. Whether in full agreement or not, my brain is finally thinking and not studying.
The trick is to focus all this with my energy and make something of it. And at such an opportune time, as I take on all the projects I’ve been preparing for, right as she turns off the lights, and my dryer buzzer goes off.
Now in the next neighborhood over, and trying to dedicate myself to pedestrian environments, I walked the walk 4 or so blocks to a brightly lit operation in the dark headwaters of Blanco road. I’d always found this whole corner of Beacon Hill interesting, stuck between the tracks, industry, and a steep incline that constitutes the Hill. The laundromat is about as clean as they come though, seen through the spotless storefront windows. Protected from the crowds of Fredericksburg Road and the sins of McCullough, a skinny abuelita manages the business with tropical colored pants and a endless bottle of Windex.
I sat down, stuffed in my pillows to a giant front loader, and watched her glide back and forth polishing the dryer glass and wood panel walls over and over. Over the sound of her and her machines, the sound of a wall mounted tv tuned to Seinfeld reruns, and over that the sounds of an old Street Fighter II console playing its once familiar automated loop. Kids played hide and seek.
Over that, I read. I’ll hold myself back from a gushing review of a Pattern Language, mainly because I’m always a fan of my latest book, so I’ll just say it’s getting at what I’ve been going after. Somewhere within these cities, buildings, window seats, and country sides I’ve been collecting, there is a reason. Beauty and function stemming from a set of patterns, that luckily then combine into an infinite array of new patterns, lending themselves all to the complexities and contradictions that make a truly great anything. Or one hopes. I can assume that by the shear number of rules that they prescribe (253) that there are countless more rules to argue for. Whether in full agreement or not, my brain is finally thinking and not studying.
The trick is to focus all this with my energy and make something of it. And at such an opportune time, as I take on all the projects I’ve been preparing for, right as she turns off the lights, and my dryer buzzer goes off.
