A number of years ago, there was a popular cartoon theme in the pages of the New Yorker magazine. It always involved two characters, one a pilgrim on a quest of enlightenment, the other a wizened, bearded guru. In an impossibly remote setting - on top of a craggy mountain devoid of chairlifts for example - the anxious and puzzled looking pilgrim would be standing before the lotus-seated guru and the caption would be something prosaic and unfathomable. "Life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?" Or, "Life is like a kumquat." Or tapioca pudding or motor oil or something that made no sense whatsoever and wasn't, on the surface, even remotely funny but given the arc of New Yorker cartoons, was at least as funny as most of the others.
Hanging on the endless shoulder of our Olympic winter, waiting for the warmth of a promised spring that seems reluctant to arrive, I have come to the conclusion - after meditating long enough to lose all feeling in my lower body - that life in Whistler is like a tostada compuesta.
Those of you deprived of Mexican food in your formative years may be unfamiliar with that delicacy. Tostada compuesta is a concoction consisting of a flat, crispy corn tortilla, a generous dollop of refried beans, onions, chilis, melted cheese, a mélange of salad and, perhaps, sour cream, guacamole and, depending on the sanitary standards of the kitchen, other surprises.
Like so many legume-based ethnic dishes, it looks uncomfortably like an accident your puppy might have had after its first encounter eating roadkill. In the evolution of experiencing Mexican food, tostadas compuestas are way down the list of things any normal person tries and only then on a dare or out of sheer boredom with the more approachable dishes like tacos and enchiladas. Messy doesn't begin to describe them; delicious does.
Why, you might ask, is life in Whistler- at least my life - as messy as a tostada compuesta?
Clothes.
In the world of elegant living, a world I have only a passing acquaintance with through the pages of elegant living magazines idly-thumbed in waiting rooms, the overriding ethos is a place for everything and everything in its place. There are closets, bureaus, armoires, chests of drawers and rows of hand-crafted baskets filled with neatly hung or folded clothes, each sorted by colour, style and designer label. There are cedar chests brimming, but never stuffed, with clothes of a different season, carefully laundered and put away with sachets of lavender or more masculine scents depending on the gender orientation of the wearer.
In a bright sunny room, there is a discreetly disguised laundry basket filled with - or more properly, emptied of - dirty clothes. Well, maybe not dirty dirty, the kind of dirty clothes can get on a singletrack trail like River Runs Through It on a drizzly ride, but clothes gently worn and in need of laundering. I suspect dirt only exists in gardens in the world of elegant living magazines and even then, it's likely referred to as soil or perhaps loam.
My world, and I imagine yours, is nothing like that. I have clean clothes hanging in the closet, folded on shelves, tossed haphazardly into a drawer, sealed away in boxes, ski bags, a backpack under the bed and in the back seat of my car. I more or less have a system of organization: I know everything I own is somewhere in the house. Except for the stuff in the back seat of the car.
Clean clothes aren't really the problem, as long as they never expect to see the working side of an iron. Fashionably wrinkled is a trend I have a heavy personal stake in supporting. The last time I tried to iron anything it ended up with hard, pink ski wax all over it and I could only wear it on very cold days or it'd stick.
Dirty clothes aren't really much of a problem either. They moulder in a basket in a dark corner of my closet until the guilt of shirking my adult responsibilities - or more likely running out of things to wear - force me to launder them. On that subject, can anyone reasonably explain sorting to me?
There is of course a transition zone clothes go through between being washed and being put "away" that occasionally seems like more trouble than it's worth. For starters, there's the identification problem. "Let's see, are these shelf clothes? Or should they be hung?" Sometimes a hanger item, say, a pair of pants, suddenly becomes a shelf dweller in a lapse of memory or lack of a hanger. When I finally find it after six months, I've often found something I forgot I owned. Not as rewarding as finding a twenty stuffed deep into a jacket pocket and long forgotten, but uplifting nonetheless.
That leaves the real tostada compuesta of this insane line of reasoning: the growing pile of clothes that are too dirty to be put back with the clean clothes but not yet dirty enough to put in the laundry basket. There being no elegant place-for-everything kind of furniture designed for them, they reside on a chair in the bedroom, a chair they are beginning to overwhelm. If we don't get into summer soon I'm going to need a sofa in the bedroom to hold them all. And there's no room in the bedroom for a sofa without removing the chest of drawers which would upset the delicate balance of clean underwear. Carumba!
This growing pile of clothes can be partially blamed on the weather. In a typical, recent day, anyone who wanted to be dressed for the weather had to have outfits that ranged from a tanktop and shorts to thermal underwear and fleece, none of which was worn for very long before becoming weather-inappropriate. I mean, when you only wear something for three hours and haven't really sweated much, is it dirty and in need of laundering? If not, whatdaya do with it? If so, how do you ever find time to do anything but laundry?
And then, of course, there's the Whistler lifestyle facet of this compuesta conundrum. Get up in the morning, go for a bike ride, special clothes... except for those of you who live in spandex shorts with chamois padding. Go for a hike, special clothes. Go to the gym, special clothes, although even I admit they need immediate laundering. Meet someone for a beer, different clothes. Attend an evening event...well, you get the picture.
In last year's Summer of Much Heat, there was no problem. None of us even wore clothes. But this year?
Hooks. Maybe if I line the walls with hooks....
