Dumpster

Yet another banner day for me. I am up early, getting to the site, Revere. I am on another ameliorative drug, this time for an infection in the root-canal done in the year of 1986, on tooth number 28, I think, on the roof of my mouth.

I need to use the toilet facilities quite badly. Pull into McDonald's up there, which has a dynamite, clean, large, toilet room. As I park, I do see a grand sight. The carriage-bottle lady is moving a milk crate to get up to the rim of the dumpster back of Esposito's. The bakery is across from the parking lot. It's about 6:30. She doesn't see me. I will explain who she is in a moment.

Seems at that instant when I see her I feel nothing, register no emotion whatever. I am on a ride, a grand ride, and am just gonna keep my mouth shut. Lest I screw it up. I mean, I know history is about to get made and stay cool. The carriage lady, my beloved carriage lady, is in dramatic relief, on a black milk container, daintily poking through Esposito's leavings of yesterday. The thing is so special to me, I know to keep my being under control, as if nothing is happening. Ever do that yourself? Like you know, a thing is so important, that if you get excited at that moment, it might disappear?

Like, you're so happy. So in love. So taken by something you saw on tv, some music you heard, or it is an ad you see driving by the highway that seems special. You just register the moment as a serious thing; let it seep in and later, you will say "wow," and make a poem or a story out of it. It was that sort of thing with me that day. History was in the making. The carriage lady was being fleshed out more for me. I was seeing another aspect of her divine nature, as she resolutely cleaned the streets of Revere and salvaged some biscuits from one of its myriad, munificent dumpsters.

I go on with my driving, to Bob's Discount Store, but decide to ride down Broadway in Chelsea to look for some cheaper gas than I can get at the Sunoco right by Bob's. This also must be discussed, as I am making a variation from what, to me, is an inviolate procedure. With all my other crazinesses.... might as well admit this one. I never, ever, vary my obsessive path. I always drive straight to Bob's, park in the same spot. Only this time. This day I do a change. The devil made me do it. I am in deep fear as I travel Broadway, Chelsea. I may get lost and never make it home to Dover. There is too much to see. Stores, signs.

There are memories. One time I went to Riordan's which is on Broadway and had a beer with Uncle Lou, a man I hung with at Bob's. One I love dearly, for his stories and wonderful, legendary personality. Some call him Dirty Lou. Some have even harrassed him, been physical with him, pushed him around as a kind of joke to aggravate him. Lou is Uncle Lou to me. You can't do anything to bother him, really. People know that, but still give him a hard time. It's a joke for his tormentors to be able to tell the story later. Lou doesn't mind. He's the only man in the world, the civilized world, of course, who can do thirty minutes on the taste and beauty of Queen Anne plums when they are in season.

I make a sweep of Broadway, down to the Revere City Hall, then into Chelsea, and swing back on Route 16 and go back to the Sunoco by Bob's, to get the gas at $1.27, which isn't a bad price, and what do I see?

A dumpster sits aside the station, with a pretty, little fence to protect it. So I swear, I see mother cat, the one that lives in the trailers by Bob's.... I won't say which one..... with her four children.... scavenging. She is a wary son-of-a-gun. She sees a guy park near her dumpster, to get a lottery ticket inside, looks him over well, and flees to the weedy field across from the gas station and on to her home, with not any food in her teeth for the kids. I don't think the guy saw her, but I did, and record the whole drama for the next generation of dumpster-watchers like me.

Most interesting, because in my last vid, called "The Icon Listens, Serious and Sad," I starred the woman with the bottles and cans in the shopping-cart, who walks up Squire Road every day in all sorts of weather. I also note the heroic cat-mother who lives at Bob's, showing up to hunt, to gather food, early, before the gaggle of humans start coming, noisy, talkative, to buy some thing at the store, and go off to another place to do the same.

Both are conservative, quiet, invisible beings, who interest me. The scene before the world gets going, always interests me the most. I like the world early.

I don't really know why, but it has a dramatic intensity to it that moves me. Maybe it is because there is so little else going on, that the things I see, stand out. I don't know, but seeing both my heroines, on the same day, doing the same thing, really moved me greatly. I honor them in my mind and they go on to make my day a good one, one that makes sense and has purpose in the commerce of life in Revere in the year of 1996, AD.

Making due with less, picking up the detritus of a profligate society, is all important to me, in my quest to understand, describe and live in, the world I inhabit. Me, I really don't understand or condone accumulation and ownership of stuff. I like to own.... sensation which I describe, then abandon for the next one. To own some thing, seems absurd to me.

The second precept of the Tao, a religion of China, is frugality. The first is gentleness and the third, avoidance of precedence over others. The Tao is old, spare, intuitive, and sometimes seen as mystical. To me it is practical and not really mystical at all. Owning and keeping stuff just doesn't grab me as something useful to do. Maybe, in some sense or other, I follow the tao. I just don't need to own stuff. Only want to borrow it, so I can do some art with it and then just pass it on or take it back to the dump or recycle it or something. I don't keep things after I register and digest them.

The world seems odd, is all. It fascinates me. I like it. I like the world. I have no need to own or control a piece of it. I prefer anonymity and the quiet it brings. I think that is true of artists like me, who glom on a thing and keep doing it, for their own pleasure and amusement. Not expecting many, or any others to get off on what they do. I am who I am and can't help it. I love to look at the things people throw away, and care deeply about those invisibles who serve us quietly by picking up stuff and taking it off center stage.

The cat brings treats home for her four children, while the bottle woman loads up her shopping cart daily, winter and summer, and traverses the streets of Revere with her heartbeat-steady walk. It is obvious to me, I identify with these two saints when I pick up trash in Bob's parking lot. It makes me feel holy and useful, too. I must have some purpose for my being on this earth. I am the kin of my maternal grandfather Nikola, and he was a good person. My reason for being here may be to pick up stuff, look at it, note it and send it on its way. I would like to know why I am here in this earth I inhabit. Please tell me, someone.

Why the dumpster thing happened to me that day, as I sought the toilet at McDonald's, then decided to take a ride, before going back to my customary gas station, is but a little mystery. I always have the feeling the world is teaching me stuff. I am guided and amused by great poets and writers and tv actors, and then instructed by the world itself. This seems odd, until you know that the Tao accounts for the world that teaches us things, if we wish to see them.

Not often do we wish to see them. The world seems too weird to learn from, so we don't use it to teach us much. The holy religion of the old China is really not a religion at all. It is an attitude. There is no building to worship in, no god, no mantra, no nothing. Only nothing.

And the trick is to make something of nothing. Something glorious and beautiful. It is the invisible, or the ugly, or the mundane, that will always instruct us most. It is where God resides. In the odd alleyways in Atget's photographs. This fellow haunts me. Of Paris of the turn of the century. A wonderful photographer.

It is in the pictures Reginald Marsh made of the Bowery and its bum-inhabitants.

It is in the less-than-visible Revere I have come to occupy and love so. The beautiful tomato and flower garden behind the Donut shop, owned by the Greeks from beloved Mytiline, Lesbos. There are some striking roses there. Seems the Greeks just gotta boogie and that is with tomatoes behind the joint they work at and, of course, own. The same is true of the Greeks who are Four Stars; they own a restaurant with that name, these four sibs, in Needham Square. They got the tomatoes and stuff, growing at the edge of the pavement of the parking lot, out back.

Seems everything I love is invisible. The beauty, sheer beauty, if I may so state, of the detergent bottles in, at Bob's. Now I tremble at the thought. The red of Trend and Tide, the green of Dynamo. The wonderful blue of All. The compact loveliness of Brillo, immortalized in the fluff-art of Andy Warhol, who also got us to take a look at the Campbell Soup can and the medal on it, of some important and maybe fictitious award given it.

You have this gas station on the corner, for god's sake. The name is sunoco, named after the orb that heats us. And there is this little triangle of earth, property, whatever, where central headquarters, somewhere in this planet, says to make it look nicely. So there is verdant grass and lovely flowers on this patch. Needless to say, there are not any hint of weeds. Not any waste; cups or Butterfingers wrappers or spent lottery tickets. Just this verdure at the darned edge of the commercial world that is the rotary near where I hang. It is just a lovely spot and I visit it often, just to admire it and wish it well. A little thing but it exists and I note and seem to admire and need it.

That is just how I see the world. The little things mean the most.

The Tao's three major precepts underlie the philosophy of the world's great institutionalized religions, so I feel very in step when I do my tao-stuff. I mean to say that the religions of the day advocate being nice, quiet, and frugal, so I feel quite in step. Not showing off, like they do on the games on the tv. Meeting with two heroic figures, a carriage-pusher and an heroic mother cat, at their respective dumpsters, on the same day, at about the same time, seems very "tao" to me.

Lucky, I mean. As if the world is confirming my notion, that to pick stuff others throw away, and use it over, makes sense. Take a bottle off the ground, cash it in, and life goes on. Getting an old sandwich part from the dumpster, feeds the cat-animals, does the world no harm, and the little fluffies go on to catch mice or do whatever cats do when they grow up in Revere. No harm done, even though the Globe won't report the events in the carriage woman's life or those that characterize the strivings of the reclusive cat-mother I observe on a regular basis.

There exists an army of invisibles who clean, cut grass, stock shelves, do things that make us happy and our lives more manageable. These folk often speak a language we do not understand. Maybe they are an animal or a foreigner we always shun because they are different. Maybe also brown or darker in skin color. They pick up, sort, discard, save, organize, whatever, and the rest of us benefit.

They may recycle, like the cat, and the carriage woman, silently and with resolute miem. They must clean the surface, pick up the stick of trash on the ground, cash in the bottle or the can for five cents. It is a mission, a jihad, to do the best possible. With no expectation of a return, other than the satisfaction of a job well done. So these invisible hands and mouthes and bodies that pick up and clean, or eat what we don't eat, add to the common weal, as citizens do, when they work or raise children, or do other productive things in the daily life.

To me it doesn't matter whether the being is animal or human. What is the difference really? They both do the same thing. Sanitize the universe like Lysol, Barcolene, and the generic toilet and tub cleaner. Lestoil... and my favorite of all, Fantastic.

The seagull swoops over the parking lot and picks at a discarded McDonald's bag, a Dunkin' Donut sack, a partially eaten Butterfingers candy bar. What the massive gulls don't ingest, the little nondescript pigeons peck at, most contentedly. Circling the yellow candy wrapping of the thing we call Butterfingers, taking a quick shot at the sweet energy, walking around a bit and coming back for seconds. That is what I see at the parking lot at Bob's and duly record here.

Everything is valuable. Refuse, and one's attittude. One's behaviour. Emotion is worth a lot. The being nice kind of emotion. Telling an old person, "have a nice day." Spending that amount of time to wish an old one a good day, and to chat a bit. They go to Bob's for that, and as far as I can see, they get it. They keep coming back. Sometimes two and three times a day. That is good.

Watching my bud, Kevin, kid with a customer,or with many patrons, at the cash register. Most vital. They laugh. I just beam. I love it so. "Some customers give us a twenty and tell us to keep the change." He says this, as he rings up an order for $ 4.37. He says "x amount for the governor," the tax, and then says this line about keeping the change. It gets a laugh every time and adds so much to the panache of the place. Kevin is so special, because he is aware that he has the capacity to make the day of a hundred people or so. He does it unfailingly every day. Every day.

Taking a long look at how beautiful a coke can really is, is a smart thing to do.

So is it to be aware of the Nature, how god sticks his or her finger into the equation. Listening at a high wind blow down the street, as I did yesterday. Forty miles an hour wind gets your attention, whirling and swirling dirt and dust, in your face. The little things utterly instruct, is all I am saying to myself, here.

This is a poetic moment, to say the small thing can matter.

Our life is composed of small things and a positive approach seems desirable to me to make the day better and the life I lead more instructive to me; so I'll always know how to act. In such a way as I don't hurt someone, or do something bad I will regret. I know we are passing through momentous times now, but I seem to prefer the small things I see. To tell about and record. I go to the dump in Dover, now called a transfer station, and collect me some colorful ads from magazines others throw away. They become the pictorial coloration for my dear vids.

I look for a term or a word in my daily life, that someone uses in a way that tickles my ear. I listen to language around me most carefully. Words, words, glorious words. I feast on them. I stare at a point far into the distance to concentrate better and hear... words, words, people and machines speak.

I take pictures with my Olympus Junior, of the oddest things I see in my daily life, because the world is really so odd to look at. I am struck by the unusual, as the ordinary is. We usually go past what is common, to get to the headlines in the paper or the key story on the tv. The curious backdrop of our current society is just fascinating, is all. I identify with the carriage lady and the mother cat, with the pigeon and the seagull, come for breakfast in the littered parking lot. I have always been a scav myself, don't deny it, am rather proud of it. That I can learn and do my minor art on the tv vids, using stuff others just dump or ignore. That very few people seem to watch my work on tv, can come as no surprise. The work itself becomes invisible, as remains its maker, me. I am invisible. No surprise here. Now they have erased my work in one studio I once worked in, to make room for other new things they want to record. That is no surprise either. I am ready to see the world, me, and my work, go back to new beginnings, at all times. Let others erase me, my world, my consciousness. Who cares? I don't.

My aunt, the one I call theitsa, in the vid, "Listen to the Voice," used to call me in Greek, "rakosilekty," junk gatherer, when I was a kid. I just remembered that, as I write this story.

I will bet the vid on my auntie, on theitsa, is one they erased in Wrentham. It is one of the early ones I did with David, a friend, who is long-gone from that studio. I am afraid to ask what they bulked out, of my work. I just don't want to know.

My aunt would stand with her hands on her hips before the round table in the kitchen, wipe them clean, from the work I had interrupted, and scold me kiddingly about the most recent treasure I had found in the trash of a neighbor and which I had brought for her to admire. She was someone to talk to, who cared about me and I suppose those were among the most important discussions I ever had with anyone on the earth.

I could never figure out why that was unusual. To want to bring things home I thought were beautiful. Everything around me was so interesting in my Jamaica Plain, of fifty years ago. I just liked to gather stuff, look at it and move on. I don't remember keeping much of it. I probably gave it away, or took it back to where I found it. I was never a gatherer.... as in collector. Rather, a gatherer who took it back, or moved it on. I guess I am what you would call a temporary gatherer. Not one who is a collector who keeps stuff, who has a permanent collection, as they say. My collection is temporary, a temporal collection, a for-the-moment one.

Life instructs better than any schoolteacher. Life teaches, like a poem teaches. Early in the day is a good time for me. To learn and have the world to myself, before all the busies get here, to exercise their needs, fill shopping bags, drop cigarette butts on the ground, used diapers, bottles, cans, pieces of paper, straw wrappers from the donut shop, etc.

The world is quiet and young. I like the world early. And the bedazzled two-legs have yet to make their appearances. They will come to occupy the same place as the cat and carriage person. The scavs have their place in the orderly universe that is Revere. I will still pick up trash and seek to admire the cleaned world I live in, where the unpaid labor attempts to keep the joint, picked up and clean. Only the dailies, the important people, who will follow us later into the day, don't know 'bout us. Only we do, and we are cheerful, happy folk. The cat, the carriage lady, and me. Amen, cuz.