Self portrait with washing machine

My washing machine is dead. Even as I write this I wonder how a machine made of metal and plastic, containing a motherboard (of all things) is appearing in The Sit Spot. And yet, the hum of this machine, its process of washing dirty clothes clean, is the background soundtrack of my life. Load upon load.

I bought it nineteen years ago from Orange RetroVision (does this even still exist?) I’d stood in the showroom, as my out-of-control toddler climbed into washing machines and pressed all the buttons, and rung my friend who’d raised four children.

What do I buy? I’d asked.

How much money do you have? she’d replied.

In my account was money my mother had left me (which was to last the children’s education).

Buy the ****, she’d said, it will be the best money you ever spend.¹

By the time my machine got to Tasmania it had already washed toddler grot, school uniforms, footy and hockey clothes, cricket whites, pony club shirts, jodhpurs - the detritus of our small life. But really it was just warming up for its job down here.

That machine has washed through drought, when the water was dirty from the bottom of the creek. It’s washed through floods, when the water was almost as dirty because of the runoff. It has washed at industrial levels, as I did all the laundry for our farm stay cottage (two queen beds, two singles, towels and the rest) day after fully booked day. And of course loads of work clothes filthy with blood and shit, heavy with oil. If you have not washed clothes worn for farm work then you may not understand how filthy clothes can be. That machine has taken it all, the heavy stinking mess, and made it clean.

The ritual of it is something I know by heart: open the door and pull out the clothes, pile into a basket, hoist to my hip and out to the line. Then snap the washing once, twice, before I peg it to dry in the salt heavy air. Then scented by rose and mulberry, whipped by the sea breeze until it’s dry, I bring it in again, transformed and ready to be worn. It’s thankless, invisible labour, made easy by the machine. In doing it, I am part of a lineage of washers, back and back.

If I was an artist I’d paint my self portrait beneath that line. I would paint wrens coming out my ears, the forked tails of swallows in my hair. I’d paint the line wound thick with jasmine. I’d paint a background of blue sky with white thunderhead clouds. Around my feet would flow the creek. I’d paint the pegs as roses. The clothes would have the words of their labour inked on them, they would fade as they dried. I’d paint the laundry basket as a sacred vessel. And my hands would be lifted in worship to the god of sunshine and drying breezes. Around me, bent as if praying, would be the wearers of all those clothes.

I could feel sad that my life has become defined by laundry, but instead I feel a little defiant, as if the discipline of washing has taught me something I might not have otherwise learned.

*

It’s early. The old machine is on the back of the ute and a shiny new one installed in the stone laundry. And, as the sun crept through the mulberry tree, I put the first load on for the day. I’ve got some catching up to do. The new machine is a different brand (cheaper but with good reviews) and that feels like a risk. But, then again, will my life ever demand as much from a machine? I hope not. I hope for the next decade that laundry becomes less urgent, but that I will always have a clothes line surrounded by beauty.

mm x

Reading

The idea for self portraits came from Sarah McColl’s gorgeous substack Lost Art on women artists. This month was Joan Brown and it sent me down a Joan Brown rabbit hole.

A friend gave me Horse Stories for Christmas, to be read in the bath, she said, and I do. Last night, I read Rudyard Kipling’s The Maltese Cat. I’ve read it before, but I’d forgotten and I loved it. So for all you horse lovers you can read it here. For writers, and for people who live with writers - Alexander Chee in The Yale Review, 100 things about writing a novel. Here’s no 18. If I do not answer the question What is the novel about? or How is the writing going? it is because my sense of a novel changes in the same way my knowledge of someone changes.” This essay published in The Guardian by Joseph Earp, on being plagiarised by John Hughes when you are not Tolstoy or F. Scott Fitzgerald is more eloquent, powerful and insightful than any of the piled on ‘gotchya’ pieces I’ve read. I loved The Dogs and was sad when it was revealed to be another sort of work. A book on my ‘can’t wait to read’ list is Kathryn Scanlan’s Kick the Latch. I’ve listened to Scanlan interviewed on Literary Friction and read a few reviews. The novel uses the words and life story of Sonia, a racehorse trainer. Perhaps it’s doing what Hughes could have done, by placing lived experience at its centre without hijacking it and making it something else. Obviously, will report back, when I’ve actually read it.

Listening

We’ve been at the shack and because of that I’ve had some hours to stitch and listen to a story. This week I’ve listened to a A Man Called Ove, which many of you will have read, I’ve found it a gentle delight. Crabbe and Sales are back with two delightful poddies on what they’ve been consuming over the summer. I’ve converted to Off Air with Fi and Jane on Times radio. Their gentle prattle is perfect for a thirty minute blast of domesticity drudgery.

Doing

January juggle with delightful house/shack full of friends. Swimming (more on this another time). Last, last, last decisions on Graft (eg: to include running heads or not??) Sneaking in some Frank time around two writing deadlines. The weather has been so perfect it’s criminal to be inside. Summer took so long to get here that I cannot commit to being at my desk. Today I’ll write on the veranda.

Have a good week Sitters.

mm

1. it was a Meile for those curious