I don’t know what most people do for fun, but for me it involves hunting for garbage.

I know there are easy places to find garbage,  garbage cans for instance. But for me, that is cheating, like tying an animal to a tree in a game reserve so some wealthy dolt can bag a horned ram. . No I am a real hunter. I guess in order to explain the thrill, I need to explain what I am hunting for and why.

About 13 years ago I lived in Yonkers, New York.  There is a big raceway there and sometimes I would walk from my Lilliputian basement apt. on Seminary Ave, to see the action or visit the diner across the street from it.  On the way, I would find the craziest assortment of garbage on the road. It was as if someone was driving ahead of me, throwing stuff out the car window with the sole intention of freaking me out.  Hairnets, dice, bizarre grocery lists, photos, glasses, gloves, scissors.  It would just make you wonder, “who the hell dropped their scissors on the way to the racetrack?”

One time at a major intersection, I walked up upon a pair of flip flops. A perfect pair of flip flops, poised to cross the street, so ready and waiting I had to swipe my hand through the air above it just to make sure there was no invisible person standing in visible shoes ( I don’t know if you can feel invisible people or not, but I thought maybe there would be some resistance, like gelatin or something?) To this day I am certain a person was crossing that street and spontaneously combusted or was eaten by ants leaving behind only their flip flops to freak me out.

I wanted to document my finds and for a while I kept a list, eventually I turned it into a game. I would gather up whatever I found on my walk and make something out of it. Mostly nuts and bolts, sometimes a bullet or key. I would glue or tie or wind wire around the findings of my day, sometimes naming them the day of the week or the location I found them. These make great presents for rich people, FYI. ( Wow, gee ED …hmmm, wow, interesting…..thanks ? )

                                                                       (Newcastle Kingpin)

So what makes good garbage you may be asking? A discerning eye…Clearly I am a garbage snob. I am not picking up the worlds cigarette butts and dirty soda cans, although that would be helpful.  I am looking for special stuff. Shiny stuff. The stuff that makes you think maybe every car on the road is missing important parts, lug nuts , transistors, side view mirrors, the jaguar off a jaguar. I metal detect with my eyes and I see possibility in most everything. That may look like some “nothing rubbish”  to you, but to me it looks like a unicorn horn or a halo or an eyeball.

                                                                                             (The Wedding Party )

The hunting is fun, but passing on my highbrow trash snobbery to my spawn is the most fun of all.  Recently I started taking my kids out on my hunting trips. This is the greatest use I have found for kids yet.( aside from scratching your head when your nail polish is wet ). Today we went out, they carried their own collecting bags! Ok, so…Kosmo, my five year old tried to pick up some used juice boxes and half eaten chicken wings ( gag ) … but other than that they did amazing. They get it.

                                                                            (Royal Pain)

Proud Garbage moment: Ogden ( age 7 and current on tetnus) held up a piece of rusty metal we found in a parking lot , “Look mom, you could use this for a torso!”..when did he learn what a torso was? I heard sheer joy when my kids found a broken cell phone and a child’s boot in the grass ( both of which we ignored because the cell phone had a “drug-deal-gone-bad-vibe “and the kids boot gave me the heebeejeebies ) Who needs summer camp with this kind of excitement on the median strip.

                                                 ” Volvina and the Steel-Toed Angel-lope”

I have drawn the conclusion that if you can find the value in the forgotten stuff on the side of the road, you can find value in just about anything.  The possibility lies more within you, than it does within the object. The rusty bolt, the abandoned key chain, the sparkling bottle cap buried half in the dirt, I see art, excitement, …a whole world. I see it for the thing it was, and the thing it could be. What an adventure it is, and good practice for seeing the light.  I hope that trickles down.

* My personal garbage game rules.
1) walk for one hour.
2) only look for what is in direct path ( its a zen thing )
3) use 100% of trash in sculpture
4) wash hands
5) wash hands again