The dumpster

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The girl I live with is a dumpster-diver, and through her I've become one too. We've been friends for a while now, but I'm not sure exactly how long... eight years perhaps? She is tall and blond, a classic beauty with a tiny waist and old-fashioned ideas. She is from a wealthy family, and travels abroad at least once a year. She is a graduate student of chemistry, and a talented artist. She brings new definition to the term "eccentric". Everyone always said that we were a perfect match, and now we live together in a house that is growing slowly more and more full of things, insane things which we made or found or were gifted to us anonymously by friends passing by in the night.

Mostly, though, it's filling with things from dumpsters.

I know that over time people have begun thinking of us differently. We are building our future out of the things we bring home, a future made out of pieces of other people's pasts. Each dumpster contains an entire story; a bankrupt church with old choir robes, conference tables and a broken organ, or the former crack house with filthy clothes and unsalvageable, vomit-stained furniture. There are some dumpsters that you know, before climbing up and peeking over the edge, that you would need a hazmat suit to climb into.

Some dumpsters tell you, in fragments night after night, about the person whose life is being emptied box by box into it, for portage to the landfill. The mildewed makeshift endtable at first tells of poverty, but soon boxes of toiletries start to tell a story of thriftiness, of always being prepared for the future. An entire case of shampoo; four boxes of Irish Spring. Thousands of tampons. She was a hoarder, the former owner of what is now trash. We guess from her hats and the brightness of her costume jewelry that she was black, and from the beautiful coat with a fur collar that she was imposing in stature. There are no religious mementos... perhaps she was an atheist, or simply not a churchgoer. Perhaps those things were given away to family. In the dozens of romance novels, we find a name written in the front cover. These things come to live with us.

In the neighborhood, we unfold our story as we go out night after night and retrieve pieces of other stories, bring them home to hoard in our history. We can see ourselves growing old, doing this; we can see the overwhelmed look on the faces of the executors of our estate as they say "What are we going to do with all this junk? Should we just get a dumpster?" Those old ladies that lived in that house... the neighbors say they used to go out at night and scavenge through the trash. Their house is full of junk, of strange things rescued from the dump. They always seemed normal enough when you talked to them, but you could see them bringing things home all the time...

Tonight we're visiting the dumpster of a lonely old man who lived on 13th. He was really into Westerns, and his Chinese pornography collection is amazing.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

A lovely piece Nigel...

[Richter]

   I love it, really captures the spirit of adventurous frugality.

My all - time favorite:  College dumpsters at spring move - out.  Clothes of all degrees of use, cheap rugs, futon frames, cheap microwaves, textbooks and computers.  I found my Timberland boots in one my last day at school, they've lasted through a lot of life since.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I used to do a lot of Dumpster Diving, but it was usually a part of breaking into some corporation. Amazing what useful information people throw into the dumpster.

[lumberjim]

felt that

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

 

It's amazing what people throw away, but even moreso, it's amazing what we throw away. It's also amazing that what we throw away tells anything about us -- when you think about it, nearly any given thing we own (especially the stuff we throw out, or the things of ours that would be thrown out if the disposal was left to others) is mass-produced... Any single object is likely to have thousands of nearly-exact duplicates. The combination and the variety in our choice of disposable goods is quite a bit of how we define ourselves -- mac vs pc, hot pockets vs pop tarts, coke vs jolt cola, nikes vs doc martens... I wonder what people would think of me, if they went through all the crap I own after I'm gone; moreso, I wonder how that would correlate with what I think of myself and what people who know me think of me. Is my choice of commodities closer to who I am than how other people see me?

[Jenne]

Great story.  And it's why I tend to donate my junk...no matter how useless it looks to me.

[The Wizard]

 
Good work. I like it.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Thanks!