Ideally Speaking

Hello Everyone,

I’m beginning to realize how important doing laundry is to me. I’ve already written two other letters about it, and am about to start a third. But laundry is something that is by its very nature cyclical, so I don’t feel too bad about bringing it up time after time. As I mentioned in an earlier letter, when I was in France, I hung my laundry on a line to dry. This habit continued in South Africa, where even in winter, it is common to rely on good old fashioned sunshine and a nice breeze. When we got back to Spokane and started to hack away at the mountains of dirty laundry we had accumulated, it was mid-July. I was convinced that it would not only be more energy efficient to use a clothes line, it would also be quicker, since the semi-arid conditions of Spokane summers make this time of year ideal for drying clothes outside. There was one problem: we don’t have a clothes line.

Not to worry, I declared! I’m a resourceful person! So I went to our garage to see what I could use instead. I found what I deemed a worthy substitute: weed wacker cord. It was strong, we had a ton of it, and best of all, it was a lovely blue color! My brother, who by this point had taken an interest in my project, helped me tie a length of wire to a fence post. “So,” I said, “know any good knots?” We momentarily regretted that he’d never been a boy scout, where an older boy, perhaps as part of his Eagle Scout project, would perhaps have passed on some of his knotty wisdom (careful how you say that!) in a series of seminars or something. But we forged ahead and managed to tie the cord all the same. We then stretched it tight and tied the other end to a hook attached to the bottom of our deck. It was perfect! The day was roasty and the line was taught. My freshly cleaned clothes would be stretched out and dry in minutes, I was sure. Think how much energy we’d be saving by not using the drier. Maybe, I thought, with a sudden gasp of environmental evangelism, the neighbors will see our stewardship example and follow suit!
I got my basket of clothes and proudly put the first item on the line. It sagged significantly. I put the second item on and the line bent lower still. After a few more, my T-shirts were touching the ground. This was not ideal.




The obvious solution was to go out and buy some actual laundry line and start again. But, for whatever reason, Matthew and I continue to use this system to dry our laundry. We started propping up the loaded line with plastic lawn furniture. When the chairs got knocked over in the breeze, we used duct tape to secure them to the line. We’ve probably dried over ten loads of laundry this way, and despite the rather pathetic display in the back yard, it works!

The back yard is the arena for another operation I’ve been performing regularly. I have a backlog of dirt samples from France and South Africa that I didn’t have time to filter while I was away, so I’ve been doing that under our deck. We have a table, where I can put my growing collection of mud-filled yogurt containers. There is a spigot nearby and I can dump the refuse mud directly into the flowerbed. The only issue is that my dad and brother have been stripping the deck so they can repaint it. This means that chunks of paint have been floating down into the mud, which defeats the purpose of filtering it in the first place. So, remembering I am resourceful, I looked around until I found an old plastic table cloth which I now use to cover the mud. To ensure that it won’t blow away, I pin it down to the table with a bucket, one of my snowboots, and one of my mom’s gardening clogs.





Though this seems to do the trick, I must confess that there have been several moments when I have thought to myself, “When I get a studio of my own, I won’t have to deal with these kind of inconveniences!”

But then I check myself: I paint with mud precisely because it isn’t ideal! I paint with mud because most people don’t have access to refined Winsor and Newton pigments. I paint with mud because even though I filter it, there are irregularities that make it an unpredictable and exciting medium. I paint with mud because it is inefficient, forcing me to put in hours of work before I even begin to think about an image.

I recently read a summary of the Bible which concluded by saying, “Ideally speaking, if we all lived in this kind of altruistic concern and engagement, human history would culminate in an epiphany of God in man. Mankind would visibly be ‘Christ.’” Thomas Merton, the author, put his entire summary, which was about a page long, in all caps, to separate it from the rest of the text. I read the conclusion and snort-laughed to myself. No kidding it’s “ideally speaking”! It’s hard enough for one life to be saturated with altruism, let alone all of human history. We have a very hard time seeing Christ in anyone, never mind all of humankind. However, as he said, Merton wasn’t describing what is, but what should be. Ideals are essential. They encourage us and make us aim high. They give us something to hope in and to wait for.

But it helps to recognize that sometimes, “good enough” is precisely that. We don’t live in the ideal; we live in the dirt. And as long as we manage to clean our clothes every so often, who cares how exactly we dry them?

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse