I love other people's trash
Every once and a while I actually have time to sit and reflect, well the sitting usually isn't really sitting – I've usually got a project of some sort at hand and I'm walking back and forth in my 16.5x14.5 ft space looking for tools or pieces of this or that. Despite the sitting part of sitting and reflecting my brain gets a chance to wander when I'm just physically doing something. For instance, today I'm driving a nail into the wood of my Murphy bed frame, so that I can follow it up with an eight inch wood screw. Parallel to it I'll add another and together they are going to brace a nice little wall mounted stereo like the ones that use to only sell at Sharper Image, but now every reputable electronic company and even a couple that aren't sell one. It's a Fischer. I don't know if this is the fancier version of Fischer Price, but if it is I'm inwardly excited at the prospect, because my first tape player ever was a Fischer Price and I beat the crap out of that thing from the age of two through about 8 and the thing never stopped. I don't think the tape player every came to demise, which probably means my mother removed it from my stuff without me knowing in order guard me from misplaced indicators of immaturity that may have caused social awkwardness, kind of lake Blankey that I use to hold, wrap myself in and then suck my thumb up to the age of about five when the parental unit starting putting a bitter tasting substance on my thumb to keep it out of my mouth. After weeks of the bitter thumb treatment, Blankey one day just disappeared.
The last screw sinks nicely into the wood, but I can hear a little bit of cracking in the frame. Luckily the splintering is going on behind years of property management's best known tool for combating poor looking units: paint. Paint and more paint. Most apartment complexes that were built over eighty years ago have walls that most resemble the layers of an everlasting gobbstopper with your chalky center being the original sheet rock. I tap in two other nails up higher in the frame to mount the speakers. As with most of the items in my studio this recent acquisition was not from a store but from other people's trash. Yes, I love other people's trash. I fished the stereo out of the trash at 1553 Alice Street, which required me climbing inside the big green bin and milling around to get all the parts. The main problem with climbing in a trash bin is that you find other things. 95% of the other things are things that are horribly gross and belong in the trash. However, there is about 5% of stuff that makes me hesitate and wonder, "Could I use that?" Looking around my room, this question has been answered many times with an affirmative and led to 2 bookshelves, a futon couch/bed, three rugs, two coffee tables, one dinner table, 4 matching chairs, a desk, an over the toilet shelving unit, a soft rocking chair, and tons of knick-knacks. In fact its probably easier to itemize the things that I have not found on the street or directly in a trash can. Lets just do it for fun; 1 loftbed (craigslist), two of my mothers old chairs, a weight bench (bought at Kmart in 1993), bicycle (bought at Jackson Family Sports in 1998), and most of my clothes were at some time purchased (minus a pair of pants I found last year at 1553 Alice and a shirt I found in Bozeman).
Most of items I pick up to become useful at some point. I just gave James at work a 1970's vintage stationary bike that I picked up in front of 1520 Alice a month ago. James busted his leg in a car accident and needed something like the bike to start working his leg out again now that is bones are starting to heal up. I've fixed up countless TV's from the trash, DVD players, and all other kinds of electronics. Usually people toss electronic devices, because one simple thing breaks. Pop out a couple screws look around for a wire or solder that is broken, re-attached and presto free electronic equipment.
With my swissarmy knife I notch out a couple plastic sections in the stereo, so that I can run the six foot power cord into and out of the battery coffin, so that all the cord except that needed for the distance to the socket is stored nicely out of site. With the unit mounted and plugged in I give it its first official power up and then dial up the volume. Modest Mouse spins happily away on the wall. Outside the sun is starting to cut through Oakland's China Town which is visually in reach of my window. The trashcans of China Town are not like the trashcans of my neighborhood. The bins and cans are all smaller. The trash is truly trash. The majority of it is wrappers and food waste. There is never any wood or salvageable items that spur my inner question, "Could I use that?" My neighborhood is middle class, blue and white collar workers with a few Chinese only apartments. If you put something out on the street that you do not want, it's usually gone by nightfall. Unfortunately a lot of people put things right in the trash, put things right in the land fill, right in the big open wound of the earth, instead of giving that thing a chance to be some one else's treasure. Why do we discard so much as a culture?
We are the disposable culture,
Nietzche's eternal return reincarnated in plastic,
The ubiquitous nature that makes everything nothing,
I toss you toss, but none of us turn.
Turn to see what? To see that nothing can take over.
Nothings swallow the world.
And in between we've learned by pattern
By repetition, by bells and food and saliva,
That you can send anything and everything away from you,
And where it goes you never have to see,
You never have to smell, taste, hear, or feel.
This must seep into or out of our psyche,
And in the way we relate to others.
The backbone is a GRE analogy in biology: eating leads to shitting.
As stuff we use leads to stuff we throw away.
In the biological world though shit leads to more life leads to more eating leads to S.
In the stuff case it just leads to non-used stuff. There is no cycle. Stuff leads to stuff being stuffed in a big gapping hole in the ground.
We should make more things like shit.
If you think utilizing shit is a great model for industrialization, you should read William McDonough's "Cradle to Cradle" or you can do the very contemporary thing and just get a video of him talking about his concepts at ted.com (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/104)
No comments:
Post a Comment