The Dump, or: Plastic Bags Blow

My last blog entry was the 29th of August, 2007. As I am familiar with the telephone, personal emails, the traditional postal service and that old fashioned face-to-face interaction, I haven't been that out-of-contact with most of you...but still, I am hopeful that this blog can once again be a way for me to let my wider community (i.e. YOU) in on my more quotidian happenings. I'll begin with today, and my trip to the dump.

Fellow apprentice Cristina and I had been planning a dump-run for the past week, inspired by the growing pile of refuse collecting from the recent "tool room cleanout 2008" as well as burgeoning canisters of glass (mostly beer) bottles that fetch 5 cents a piece in the state of Hawaii. Our fellow apprentices fill up these bins quick, and as neither of us drink alcohol, we thought we could benefit from their casual habit by redeeming the bottles for a little cash treat. So we hefted the sticky canisters into the bed of Ken's truck, nestled between strange metal machine parts and broken tool bits, and headed toward the Keauhou Dump.

I backed the truck into the appropriate area, where two large gaping mouths yawned odoriferously, ready to swallow whatever odd flotsam and jetsam we cared to toss down its gullet. The ugly mouths faced east, the ocean stretching eerily behind them westward, giving the unsettling feeling that one was throwing their trash directly into that life-giving expanse. And, in many ways, I think we are.

Where does my #5 (non-recyclable here) plastic yogurt container GO exactly?

What happens to the oily rags, miscellaneous metal tool pieces, gummy worn tires, and broken glass light fixtures that I threw into that ominous dark hole?

And how do I reconcile with the fact that I fill plastic bags full of such refuse on quite a regular basis, even with my efforts to reduce my earthly negative impact?

My startling dump experience today is not one that most of us experience often. Our garbage is usually carried away by a refuse service that takes our smelly, tidy plastic bags away from our homes without requiring too much thought or effort on our parts. But both Thought and Effort are necessary, I think, if we are to begin reconciliation with the earth that sustains us.

And today, right now, I don't really care if my personal quest to divert from and reduce my personal "waste stream" makes any sort of larger positive impact--if it reduces our overall carbon emissions or allows for real change on the global scale. Right now, today, I am concerned with my personal relationship with that which sustains me, the larger world in its myriad mysterious and blatant importance. When I choose to consume less, to make decisions with the good of the earth in mind, I expand my availability to a deeper relationship with the land, the water, the air, the other living creatures. When I hold these aspects of intense necessity close in my daily wanderings, I also begin to understand them as sovereign in their own natures, not simply as "resources" to be harvested by us humans.

Going to the Dump was a slap in the face and I needed it. Don't take things for granted!, that gaping mouth of trash yelled. Wake up!, it shouted at me, the sun reflecting silver on the ocean behind it. So I'll end my story here, a personal jaunt, and spare y'all any self-righteous "shoulds" and finger-waggling. But, plastic bags do blow, if you know what I mean.

Big love and prayers in all directions,
--molly

(And we made 15 bucks by recycling all those beer bottles, in case you wondered. Personally I wondered just how much energy goes into re-cycling that clanky green glass into usable form again?...)