Belated Earth Day
Long day++
I woke up at 6 with dreams of Z and some nightmarish nightmare about...I forget. Nothing important or scary. My plan was to go out and fulfill my 2nd Assignment from Lindsey (we do long-distance assignments, they rule) by going into the forest next to my apartment, gathering some junk (Z and I counted 13 tires in the winter), piling it in a nice grassy setting where everybody could see it and taking an Andy Goldsworthy-esque photo.
What I had forgotten from years past (my Eagle Scout project) was that once you begin to pick up trash from an area, you can't stop. Once you've rid a region of 'some' of it's garbage, what's keeping you from removing the rest of it? Staring at junk that was further and further away from my target area, I couldn't come up with a good enough reason NOT TO, and thus accumulated a BIG PILE OF TRASH>
couch... thing ... other thing ... IMAGE DUMP ...
An eerie feeling festered at my mind during the entire cleanup. My actions seemed so abnormal, so out of place that I feared a cop would be called to arrest ME for littering. See: memories of working for Sampson State Park and the ridiculous laws that govern state property. I thought that kids would point and stare, mothers would look open-jawed, and at least somebody from Valley View would come over and give two shits about what I was doing. Like black retribution in American History X, it just didn't happen. The opposite was happening. NOBODY CARED! People that saw me piling trash looked for a second and carried on, and VV workers dumping soil across the street didn't give me a second glance.
Still, the thought of having someone yell at me for putting trash onto their lawn (who knows where I got it, right?) persisted, and I did the right thing by bagging the trash and driving it down to the dumpster. I wanted to leave it in the open, to have the public notice it and for one single person to do something about it, but that day would never come. I just pray that one bored little kid stopped watching Yu-Gi-Oh! for three seconds to stare outside their window & watch the weirdo putting trash in its proper place.
After a quick snooze and a back-rub, I was out on the town for Albany's Tulip Festival. I had my sinuses cleared via some hot wings at Bombers, and walked around Washington Park until I had had my fill of people-watching.
TULIP-FATED IRONY: Here I was in the middle of a celebration of nature, and all I could see around me were the thousands of trash bits that tulip-goers had left to blow around into...everywhere. It was worse than the years-old garbage piles of the forest, and really made me sad / frustrated. (Frustration came from yearning to start picking all of it up...but realizing that if I even grabbed one piece I would be compelled to pick it ALL up).
Chad out.
I woke up at 6 with dreams of Z and some nightmarish nightmare about...I forget. Nothing important or scary. My plan was to go out and fulfill my 2nd Assignment from Lindsey (we do long-distance assignments, they rule) by going into the forest next to my apartment, gathering some junk (Z and I counted 13 tires in the winter), piling it in a nice grassy setting where everybody could see it and taking an Andy Goldsworthy-esque photo.
What I had forgotten from years past (my Eagle Scout project) was that once you begin to pick up trash from an area, you can't stop. Once you've rid a region of 'some' of it's garbage, what's keeping you from removing the rest of it? Staring at junk that was further and further away from my target area, I couldn't come up with a good enough reason NOT TO, and thus accumulated a BIG PILE OF TRASH>
couch... thing ... other thing ... IMAGE DUMP ...
An eerie feeling festered at my mind during the entire cleanup. My actions seemed so abnormal, so out of place that I feared a cop would be called to arrest ME for littering. See: memories of working for Sampson State Park and the ridiculous laws that govern state property. I thought that kids would point and stare, mothers would look open-jawed, and at least somebody from Valley View would come over and give two shits about what I was doing. Like black retribution in American History X, it just didn't happen. The opposite was happening. NOBODY CARED! People that saw me piling trash looked for a second and carried on, and VV workers dumping soil across the street didn't give me a second glance.
Still, the thought of having someone yell at me for putting trash onto their lawn (who knows where I got it, right?) persisted, and I did the right thing by bagging the trash and driving it down to the dumpster. I wanted to leave it in the open, to have the public notice it and for one single person to do something about it, but that day would never come. I just pray that one bored little kid stopped watching Yu-Gi-Oh! for three seconds to stare outside their window & watch the weirdo putting trash in its proper place.
After a quick snooze and a back-rub, I was out on the town for Albany's Tulip Festival. I had my sinuses cleared via some hot wings at Bombers, and walked around Washington Park until I had had my fill of people-watching.
TULIP-FATED IRONY: Here I was in the middle of a celebration of nature, and all I could see around me were the thousands of trash bits that tulip-goers had left to blow around into...everywhere. It was worse than the years-old garbage piles of the forest, and really made me sad / frustrated. (Frustration came from yearning to start picking all of it up...but realizing that if I even grabbed one piece I would be compelled to pick it ALL up).
Chad out.
posted by Jumpmen Podcast at 5:12 PM
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