A forced visit to the laundromat convinced me that there must be a better solution to clothing and cleanliness than washing machines and quarter fed driers. Having your mother or a girlfriend do the laundry works for me, though I have neither. But it's a problem I don’t feel obliged to solve when I have clean laundry in the drawer. When I'm elbow deep in a solution of detergent and bleach to move things around and even out a load, however, I think of the vast amounts of chemicalized water and all the energy, both human and electrical, involved in cleanliness. Tolstoy had an aunt, if I remember correctly, who never bathed. She abstained on religious grounds, though I never quite understood what that meant. The Hawaiians, who swam in the ocean both for sport and cleanliness, treated clothing more as decoration than concealment. Something we might consider. They pounded a soft paperlike cloth from bark — there was no woven cloth — and treated the finished product with reverence. They did not wash or dry clean what they wore. They returned what was no longer serviceable to the earth which had provided it, and made do with leaves and flowers in between. It’s a lovely picture, and except for the pounding it seems like an easy solution. Of course, it might depend on where you find yourself. What, for example, would you do on cold nights in front of the computer? For the record, it’s pleasant outside tonight. I’m wearing an old t-shirt and boxer shorts as I type this, which seems like the perfect outfit under the circumstances, except that I’m running low on boxer shorts.