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rules of the laundry chair

  • it need not be a chair
  • it need not have a top
  • the only requirement is that multiple things (most likely clothing) will be able to adhere or cling to it in some fashion
  • a secondary, though not as strict, requirement is that it is at least life-size
  • a corollary: the laundry chair is not one size fits all; its size most often depends on its user, though a particularly ambitious child may choose a 7 ft tall laundry chair

these rules beg the question, what can be a laundry chair?

  • a side, corner, or portion, of the bed
  • a floor (though separation from the ground is often what necessitates a laundry chair in the first place)
  • a doorknob
  • a desk
  • a coatrack*

[*] while the laundry chair may take on the form of the humble chair, users often witness a curious metamorphosis upon continual, unaddressed accumulation. consider a laundry chair in the base form of a coatrack with several articles of clothing hung and piled on top: is this still, at its very core, a coatrack, or another creature — another being — altogether entirely?

Rules of the Laundry Chair
7

<A World Without Living Room>
SKW, 12/2016

How sweet the daytime world where I linger!
I taste movies with lovely friends
shake hands with every stranger
and read with family on cozy weekends

Open my door and people enter
chat in my living room — an interaction zone
Sharing their love as I remember
sometimes they stay but sometimes don’t

Moon climbs up as it did before
declaring my time for nightly journey
Covering blanket like closing door
A blink of eyes Opens Sesame, Sesame

The wonder world is open to a guest
where I enjoy solitary existence from dark till light
“Look, she is the hermit of our forest!”
Shadows and meadows giggle with delight

Birds singing perch on my wooden cabin
Believe your eyes! It has no living room
Only my Soul happily dwellin’
Embracing her, I seek peace from whom

I cherish the life of love, while
darkness endows me with a life of solitude
Everyone lives in a world of bustle
but in Soul I converse and myself seclude

Night recedes and eyes blink fresher
mind of peace and calmness maintain
I return with energy in dark I gather
to life of love that unfolds again


This is a little poem I wrote when I was in high school. As a second language speaker of English, I needed the help from my mother so she greatly contributed to this little poem as well.

Since I was 14 or 15, I have become obsessed with the notion of being a hermit, especially that concept of solitary livelihood in a secluded forest has been eulogized and romanticized by essentially every literatus and painter in the Chinese history. Even if I casually flip through the poetry in my middle school textbooks now, I would still be instantly flooded with the profound sense of melancholy loneliness which entails pride and resilience of one’s character — something a 14-year-old outcast would dream of.

Therefore I created an imaginary world in my head, a space with very particular and vivid cinematography. It was supposed to be a wooded area of predominantly green color with light streaks dripping from the leaves aloft like spotlights, landing on a carpet of grass. Vines and twigs act like fence, and only my friends know my whereabouts. In the forest it sits a wooden cabin without a living room. It is a place to navelgaze without intrusion.

A World Without Living Room