Gustave Caillebotte, Laundry Drying, Petit Gennevilliers (1892),
oil on canvas, 106 x 151 cm, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum. WikiArt..png
What the Wind Reveals
by Michael Escoubas
Concerning the wind … we cannot see it.
We see only what the wind does, what the wind
creates, how the wind sculptures life,
that the sheets and garments were once worn
by real people who lived and loved and soiled
them … maidservants’ hand-scrubbed them,
pinned them to clotheslines so the wind
could dry them, have its way with them,
on the banks of the Seine. A wise man told me
that the wind resembles life itself: when things
go wrong and the soul is soiled by misplaced
anger and life needs a scrubbing to get clean
and a do over. Ah, yes, we sense that a change
of clothes is in order, we need the favorable
transformations of the wind, like the clothes
whipping in the wind, like the soul …
revealed and healed by that which cannot be seen.
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