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Showing posts from August 14, 2010

drying hair and drying laundry, frost too

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I have been thinking about the fact that for most people, drying hair and clothing is one of the most intimate fragrance experiences they have in any given week. Looking at this painting by John Sloan, I can almost imagine all the different smells—the soapy clean musk of the laundry, the animalic smell of human hair, the perfume from the shampoo, the smell of sweat, the hot asphalt, the myriad city smells of exhaust, heat, sewer, food, etc. The act of drying one’s hair is such a special, human thing, such an affirmation of femininity… Consider the beautiful image of women throwing their hair up to dry it in Robert Frost’s “Birches”: When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay. Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, and turn many