Broken Bubbles and Toren Wrappers

Carelessly, I throw the wrapper into the pile that my mother refers to as a garbage can. It is overloaded, just as the memories and associations that this particular wrapper elicits. Bubblicious bubblegum, in its once tidy pack, is now dissheveled, toren from its hinges, for the purposes of my indulgence. It is as shrapnel to the bomb itself. It lacerates my vision, and sends me spiraling into the absurd happiness of my youth.

“Brian, did you want to go to the store?”

“Sure, let’s get some bottles together.” The truth is, we were always getting some bottles together. Fortunately, the stock pile never seemed to run low.

“Do you want to go to the corner store?

“Where else?” We acted as if we had options. As if we had a means of going any further before our parents simultaneously realized that we had exited the general bubble that was neighborhood existence.

Then, it was across the field at the end of the block, the same field that would later become a dental center. As if an ironic premonition, we were bent on destroying each and every tooth that claimed residence within our oral cavaties. Approaching the door, we would make our final beverage decisions, after having rehashed everything to redundancy, for the past fifteen minutes.

“Coca-cola just tastes better.”

“Sprite. That is where it’s at.”

“But, with Coca-cola, there is the chance that we will win another one.” Last thing we needed was another Coca-Cola.

With that, the decision was made.

We entered the door, walked to the right extremity of the building and pulled out our respective choices, which happened to be Coca-Cola after the previous argument. Eagerly we pulled the white caps from the bottles, and flipped them over to display our booty. At that time there were no annoying online codes to enter, no sweepstakes drawings. Just the utter simplicity of immediately redeeming your prize at the store counter. Not this time.

Walking back from the embedded depths of the cooler area, we would both eagerly realize the main mission, the main endeavor. The reason that we had been positioned as children within such close proximity to a party store that sold everything from abstract candy treats to foreign beverage varieties. There, immediately in front of us, was the new industrial rack that they had assembled. This rack was responsible for housing at least thirty different varieties of Bubblicious bubble gum; the finest chewing gum in the Midwest. Despite being the monotony of serving sizes, they featured various labels, in a plethora of extravagant colors. They were all suggestive. The flavors were as a giant wheel of oral anticipation.

Strawberry Splash, Watermelon, Sour Apple, Blue Blowout, Lightning Lemonade, Twisted Tornado, and Gonzo Grape (Hunter S. Thompson reference?)

My youth undoubtedly exists as a compilation of various different encounters and experiences. The day I stopped eating excessive amounts of Bubblicious bubble gum, is the same day that the bubble of my youth popped.

Thrown away on June 14, 2007

 

Envelope #1

I’ve convinced myself of something that suggests abandonment. Two tireless toren threads stranded in an abstract stream of redundant enterprise.

Is it suggestive? Question, questioning.

Two girls broken by bottled beers stepping stemmed interventions. Power, lined in book bindings. Ink dripping.

Stepping obtuse steps on shattered pavement walks.

Bark/Tree/Roots/Stems, bleeding semen syrup from misplaced photos, in journals.

Smiles are reflections on acidic absurdity.

Television monitor off. Toren windows, ketchup, and salamander ponds. Collecting dust, neon dust. Spawned from advertisements.

Brown dirt as rancid love unburied.

Thrown in the household trash receptacle on June 14, 2007

 

From Empty Cages to Empty Homes

Hush little baby, don’t you cry

Mama’s gonna’ buy you a mockingbird

And if that mockingbird don’t sing, mama’s gonna’ wash it down the toilet drain

and buy herself a diamond ring, on daddy’s charge card

so that she can pawn it latter and have enough money after she divorces him to take her boyfriend on a weekend trip.

So while you are growing weary from all of those tears,

she and Tom will be fucking in a brown sedan down near the riverfront.

Hush little baby, don’t you cry

your mom’s a do nothing whore, that is more concerned with a coked out night on the town, than for your welfare.

Hush little baby, don’t you cry

the psychologist will listen to all of your problems after the government assumes responsibility for you, and you become an entity of the state. If you are lucky, you will get your picture in the newspaper. Daddy’s got a girlfriend now, and your no longer the apple of his eyes.

 

religious garden figures

 

The radiant energy of God is projected from a 40 watt bulb, kept within a white plastic mold of some obviously religious figure; potentially a bishop, possibly a monk. There is no crown/garment to designate position. Just a pair of tightly clasped hands which indicate religious foundation.

A row of cucumber plants, and a suggestive Dahlia bathe in the radiant nature of its energy, as each plant bathes, rather drowns, in the holy water which Frank divests upon them daily. The plants wither into a dark brown absurdity amongst the ashes of his grandmother and sister. Frank watches them with pity, straining to see them through the stain glass window he recently installed in his overwhelmingly ornate kitchen.

The light recalled distant memories. He remembered the smell of basalm and his mother’s bible; the glare of the polish which covered her shoes; the flowing nature of her brown garments as they swept across the floor; the beauty which he found in her stern reprimand.

Hearing a neighborhood child scream, he lifted the latch with admitted hesitance, and walked into the yard. Looking down the block, he noticed the kids careening on their bicycles. He resented their absurd laughter; the inevitability of fornification. Glancing at his hands, he cringed at his own sterility. Those hands would never touch.

Looking back to the lawn ornament, he realized himself in its ineffective gesture. The plants died outside the house of God, and Frank, was dying too. 

 

Lifting the Lid: An Introduction in Brevity

Various word associations propel and perpetuate the designation of trash as something entirely deleterious. This is most easily understood in light of the way the word, and its various associations, are utilized as adjectival expressions. People are often unwittingly categorized as “White Trash,” and bad relationships are considered “disposable.” One’s demeanor or wardrobe might even suggest that they are “trashy.”

Yet, despite the inherent stigmatization which plagues social interaction, trash has become a locus of fascination. It is fundamentally rooted in media and entertainment. From early childhood, one is bombarded with images of an unusual green character that draws its existence from the confines of the garbage can. It garners attention in daily papers, online forums, and television specials which document the increasing problem of disposing of items, and efforts to recycle. In a local paper entitled Real Detroit, they provide pictures of trash finds in each weekly edition.

Issues concerning the importation of trash, brings the various items which we dispose of into the realm of possession and identity. Garbage connotes distinctions of his/hers, mine/yours, and, most especially, ours/theirs. Here, trash becomes a way of making distinctions between groups of people, and a way of associating with others.

Although these are the varying means by which the issue of trash itself is continuously recycled, the pursuit of trash has developed into a passtime. Fascination with that which has been disposed of can be identified in consideration of trash collectors, antique salesman, and second hand shops. The phrase “One person’s trash, is another person’s treasure,” seems entirely prescient here. Trash collecting is a sport; an activity. It has entered the transitory realm of the artistic, the trendy, and the competitive. Current television shows highlight the fascination with competitive trash collecting; The desire to find something which has been used, and to use it in innovative challenges.

In an attempt to illuminate the transitory and unexpected nature of these developments, this website facilitates the means by which this fascination can be documented. Furthermore, this website is an attempt, on behalf of the author, to suggest that which is often considered, and yet, entirely undocumented and un-pursued. Inevitably, trash becomes something; something which fills landfills, finds its place in other homes, or that is reworked to mechanical absurdity. Still, the questions remain.

It has been said that trash tells a story. The story of consumption has been documented extensively. But, trash also provides an opportunity for narrative. An opportunity to consider something beyond statistical calculations. The contemporaneous status of trash suggests a story, which this site will attempt to facilitate.

This site will not attempt to document American disposal as it is generically/stereotypically perceived. Instead, it will try to express trash through figuration and extensive fragmentation. This is an attempt to suggest, not an effort to define. Attempts to define generally yield percentages and statistics. When attempting to express fascination, these numerical spreadsheets are just as disposable as the trash trends they attempt to document