That Dancing Machine

The Dancing Washing Machine

The washing machine was agitated, or rather shaking violently, rocking erratically during the spin cycle. It waltzed itself across the laundry room and wedged the door closed. No one was getting in. The machine had left the door ajar just enough so the human could see that this was deliberate.

What we had here was a very upset laundry appliance, perhaps over worked and under appreciated. It seemingly mustered its energy into an act of defiance, not realizing that blocking out the human who dumped dirty clothing into its orifice negated its reason for existence.

The human was prevented from entering. No amount of pushing against the door succeeded in opening the door. There was no way to pry the door unshut. The human thought of desperate measures, such as getting a chain saw and cutting through the door, climbing through the hole and man handling the bulky machine out of the way. It would mean finding someone with a chainsaw and buying a replacement door.

Too bad it wasn't a question of unlocking the door with a key, at least a literal key. Perhaps there was another way, a figurative restitution to the situation. She dialed her metaphysical counselor, who gave her this advice:

"Put your face up to the door and whisper to the washing machine that you are going to the nearest laundromat. Pull the door shut and pretend to walk away. If you say it with the correct inflection, the washing machine will probably walk back to where it is supposed to be. We all have a need to be valued and serve a satisfying purpose. Even a washing machine has needs".

The human tried this suggestion. Then looked for the chain saw.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Mummy's Curse and the Armani Suit

Image
    There’s a reason it’s called rag paper.   For centuries, ragpickers supplied the papermaking industry with cotton and linen. Discarded clothing scraps were the aluminum cans of the past. They provided a livelihood to the unskilled. At the dawn of the Industrial Age, everything changed. A rising bourgeoisie and the success of education lead to increasing demand for printed material. The impact upon paper and the rag   supply chain was unanticipated. Consumption of traditional cotton and linen scraps outstripped supply.   The price of rags rose. When demand for papermaking material exceeded supply, alternate sources were sought.    One long forgotten trove of very, very old rags was rediscovered in the 1800s: linen wrapped Egyptian mummies. A Maine papermill owner imported a boatload of them and removed the linen wrappings. The linen was then converted into pulp with the end product being butcher wrap.   Production of the brown   ...
Read more

Jackson Pollock's Over-Splatter

Image
  Jackson Pollock's Over-Splatter,   How They Happened, Where They are Located, Why They Went Unnoted for More than Fifty Years, and How They May be Understood and Put to Use By Sandy Kinnee and Lauren Kinnee, Ph.D. Once You See the Drips You will Always See them PART 2 Jackson Pollock’s Stray Drips (Over-Splatter): Their origins and implications   Abstract   This paper proposes a wholly new method for reconstructing the chronology of Jackson Pollock's oeuvre based on the presence of drips of stray pigment on otherwise cohesive canvases.  Pollock, after having finished a painting and let it dry, moved it to the side in his studio where it occasionally accumulated drips and other marks that were the byproduct of his working method.  These marks, here termed ‘over-splatter,’ are present on both recto and verso of many Pollocks in major museums.  Lavender Mist of 1950, for example, has a large and distinctive red splotch on the front, right s...
Read more

Isamu Noguchi and His Nisei Muse

Image
Noguchi Doing Time While it is true that at Poston Isamu Noguchi was neither fish nor fowl not fully Japanese and was in the internment camp voluntarily None of those who had reason to not want him around had the authority to release him He was a perpetual outsider Much like Pollock was portrayed as a cowboy but was anything but Except for Jackson's drinking Two artists doing time in ill-fitting Pigeonholes The book tells the story of Isamu Noguchi's girlfriend and muse during his time in the Poston Internment Camp, located in the Arazona desert where she inspired his famous lamps. CLICK HERE TO BE TAKEN TO THE FULL PREVIEW OF THE BOOK. The book is a limited edition of fifty copies.
Read more