Public garbage cans

A garbage can in San Francisco

   When you grow up in New York City, as I did, you become accustomed to the sight of dumpsters in the street, large containers parked outside apartment buildings where construction or renovation is going on. My father used to love climbing the sides of these receptacles to see if there were pieces of wood, slightly broken chairs or tables, or wooden wire spools inside which he could use to make furniture with. I used to enjoy helping him retrieve the things from these bins, and was always fascinated by the absence which the objects seemed to illustrate.  At one time integral parts of other people's lives, these castaways were the only thing about these people that were in any way tangible to me, and the mystery of their previous environments always captured my imagination. Although I never become the dumpster-lover that my father was, my experiences with him transferred onto another part of the city that pointed to the absence of others for me; the garbage cans and trash one finds on the street. Although in San Francisco, California, my current home, one is less apt to see garbage in the street than in New York City, and the garbage cans here hide their contents more effectively, I have been again thinking about the subject of public trash receptacles. 

   As I sit down to write, I recall a teacher of mine who in art history class quoted on more than one occasion a few words from F.T. Marinetti's futurist manifesto of 1909. The words were, "Oh, maternal ditch", and were used by Marinetti to describe his near rapturous state when he finds himself in a sewage ditch, submerged in filthy water following an automobile accident . I don't find the thought of laying in dirty water particularly moving, but those words seemed very important to my teacher, and the emotional response that the words illicit in me still resonate very strongly, and have stayed with me all these years later.  For me, it is all that is unknown about where the refuse comes from that is poignant. 

   When I see a garbage can being utilized, my mind fills with the negative spaces of all that I don't know about the things inside; where did they come from, who put them there, and why were they no longer needed? If I choose to see the receptacle less in terms of absence and more in terms of construction, the thoughts change to what is being assembled, and how are these ideas communicated by the different contributors? Either way, the questions and empty spaces overcome the known, and I am left wondering. I assume that this absence and loss is for me is a kind of spirituality, and that the body which houses my soul is a garbage can.

Garbage cans from my younger years in New York City