Trash Can Philosophy

NEW! Valu In A Box! Ultra. Extra. More. Cheap. Buy. Buy. Buy. The slick and slippery language of these Orwellian times. I don't buy it. As the stores change sets to gear up for the Holidays, the surreality of consumer culture hits me hard. Everything is backwards. Plastic shit is exalted while actual shit is reviled. (You know, shit. Nature's refuse. The stuff that makes gardens grow). Glamorous garbage is fondled and coveted while outside the gutters lay full of walnuts and windfalls. Food and compost... forgotten. Who really believes Value comes in a box? Taking the "e" off it doesn’t change the fact that the selling game is old. Oh, it's getting late.

Certainly there are many shades of gray in the territory between basic natural essentials and worthless junk. I mean a lamp is a lamp. It’s a useful illuminating device whether it's pink retro or classic faux marble but when we are bombarded with these “choices”, I can’t help reflecting on all the people on the planet who don’t have even the luxury of electricity. I struggle to stay conscious in the face of it all.

Martin Prechtel (artist, shaman and author of Secrets of the Talking Jaguar) talks about "storied objects". The importance of knowing the unique history of every object in your life. I like this idea of every thing I own holding connotations of particular experiences and remembered faces. Maybe an overwhelming concept for Westerners but a worthy ideal. Simplification. Reawakening beauty and story. Nice.

So, to the best of my ability, I try to avoid stores. I buy groceries, yes. But “shopping”? No. Christmastime at a mall is my idea of a nightmare. I don’t like to think of myself as a consumer but it’s unavoidable. Inevitably I find myself in line at some big box store with my eyes glazed in a quiet horror trance at the shelves burgeoning with arrays of the worst kind of crap. Stuff. Stuff. Stuff. Most of which has no intrinsic value except as physical markers of the energy wasted to make it. It’s like the factories have gone haywire pumping out colorful varieties of multi-shaped petroleum for people to buy, take home, break and throw in a can. Pure landfill. An obscenely lucrative system based on sheen and a ridiculous absence of integrity and substance. I often feel an impulse to pull out my camera and start documenting the tragic absurdity of it all because I know it just can’t last. If this keeps on, we definitely won’t. It sustains us not and is itself utterly unsustainable.

So, yes to storied objects. Yes to glazed pottery bowls that make me think of the friends who made them. Yes, to the willow couch my parents gave us in those early years of marriage as our first piece of real furniture. Yes to wool hats spun and knitted by the hands of dear friends. Yes to carved wooden elephants that conjure the smoky landscape of Thailand. Years ago, I read a book, Paulus Berensohn's "Finding One's Way With Clay" about the relationship between the human being and clay. It describes the simple act of making pinch pots, in particular "beloved bowls" made from the same piece of clay with the intent of sharing. The essense of the book stayed with me: Beauty lies not in what is seen but rather in what is revealed. Truly.

(Photo: Disney directive. This was neatly printed on a trash receptacle in Frontierland. Oh, snap!)