The Laundromat

Nothing better informs me of my place in society than by going to the laundromat.

Here, with the other bachelor vineyard workers during a day of rest in the rains,

here, the wives and mothers of past and future vineyard workers,

and some fucking hippy eating broccoli,

here is where I sit, my pay turned to coin,

the coin turned to soap and water, washing away the:

(blood of the harvest) + (mountain soil) + (my sweat) = 2 times through the washer in order to get clean.

a twenty + 3 hours of my life.

The process,

the fluorescent lights,

the guy eating broccoli: they all make me need to leave and go walk outside. It’s stopped raining and the sulight is silver in the puddles.

This neigborhood, you have to cross the street and all of sudden there’s sidewalks, the roads are well-maintained. All of sudden you’ve stepped into big S Sonoma, the real town, the better side of the tracks. I like the other side, the working-class neighborhood. I like the spiderwebbed asphalt roads, the well-painted houses and tiny little yards of working people who’ve clung onto their homes.

In my neighborhood, across the highway, farther away from representative city government, there’s no mail service, but more chickens in the backyards.

It’s going to rain again next week. We’ve had a few inches. The fruit: it’s going to start falling apart in a week, the vineyard’s going to be muddy, a mess, and men will fall, trailers will slide, and then it will be all over, and time for a rest.