...my dad came home with this many flowers today--found on his last dumpster run of the evening. Stunning. Dumpster diving isn't always dirty and broken...
Monday, August 2, 2010
Impromptu Florist
...my dad came home with this many flowers today--found on his last dumpster run of the evening. Stunning. Dumpster diving isn't always dirty and broken...
The Garbage Seat
I'm in the garbage seat. I'm pretty sure of it. My dad and I are on the rounds, collecting cardboard to take to the recycling center. He usually does this alone, and I'll bet when I'm not here he fills the passenger seat with the bits and pieces he decides to take home with him. Things like copper wire, old jars, broken toys, electrical boxes and chipped ceramic bowls.
Today I am his assistant. We sift through dumpsters organizing and folding cardboard boxes, taking things out of the dumpster that don't belong there. Which is nearly everything, but we only have so many hands.
I'm glad I brought gloves.
My dad is in a foul mood today, griping about people and their lack of responsibility, "How many times have I told them to separate their recycling from the yard waste?..." I go along with him, all the while thinking (and sometimes saying), this is your choice. You could stop caring. You could move somewhere where people are responsible. You could do something bigger than talking to six or eight people every week about this issue. But it is what it is.
Depressing.
This whole area is depressed. And I've come back here, to this town in which I grew up, to mend my broken heart. Well, that's not entirely true. I came here because I had nowhere else to go. And I happen to have a broken heart. The two are not related.
With his truck bed full of cardboard and newspapers we head to the recycling center, where the man who runs the place clearly does it for the business of it and not for the earth-centric appeal. In the middle of any conversation, he is apt to bust out with statements like, "He wasn't even born in the U.S.!", referring to our current president and his "illegitimate" election as our leader. It's no use. This town is what it is. It's a problem to be solved. It's a sad example of ignorance and poverty weighing down any possibility for progress.
It's my hometown. And I'm comfortably repulsed by it. I suppose as long as I'm here I'll keep searching dumpsters with my dad and feeding feral cats and soaking in the wet air of the swamp coolers, because that's just what ya do. I guess it ain't so bad. I guess it could be worse.
Today I am his assistant. We sift through dumpsters organizing and folding cardboard boxes, taking things out of the dumpster that don't belong there. Which is nearly everything, but we only have so many hands.
I'm glad I brought gloves.
My dad is in a foul mood today, griping about people and their lack of responsibility, "How many times have I told them to separate their recycling from the yard waste?..." I go along with him, all the while thinking (and sometimes saying), this is your choice. You could stop caring. You could move somewhere where people are responsible. You could do something bigger than talking to six or eight people every week about this issue. But it is what it is.
Depressing.
This whole area is depressed. And I've come back here, to this town in which I grew up, to mend my broken heart. Well, that's not entirely true. I came here because I had nowhere else to go. And I happen to have a broken heart. The two are not related.
With his truck bed full of cardboard and newspapers we head to the recycling center, where the man who runs the place clearly does it for the business of it and not for the earth-centric appeal. In the middle of any conversation, he is apt to bust out with statements like, "He wasn't even born in the U.S.!", referring to our current president and his "illegitimate" election as our leader. It's no use. This town is what it is. It's a problem to be solved. It's a sad example of ignorance and poverty weighing down any possibility for progress.
It's my hometown. And I'm comfortably repulsed by it. I suppose as long as I'm here I'll keep searching dumpsters with my dad and feeding feral cats and soaking in the wet air of the swamp coolers, because that's just what ya do. I guess it ain't so bad. I guess it could be worse.
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