I started having obsessive desire to pick up litter and trash starting in first or second grade. I cleaned up our alley in the south side of the city. I made a fort in the backyard of salvaged “fort” stuff, and soon found it very uncomfortable to walk past trash/litter without examining it or putting it where it belonged, probably in a trash can or recycling. Well, since then (1982 or so) litter has multiplied by trillions. Bottled water wasn’t even a thing back then, NO BOTTLES EVERYWHERE. There really wasn’t even that much trash or litter, in retrospect. Now, in Pittsburgh it’s like the whole residential city is the trash heap. Literally, litter everywhere, on every lawn, in every gutter, illegal dumping, big old TVs, Big flat screen TVs with cracks (sitting there in the woods until the end of time). There would be no way to keep up with it. But my personal narrative explains that this was the start of my generalized anxiety disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder. Besides picking up paper and being unable to walk past it, which I reinforced for myself by providing the relief of picking up paper every once in a while (the strongest KIND of reinforcement, haha!). I also needed to double check all the locks on doors in our house, pick the shoes and laundry piles up on the carpeted stairs up to our floor of rooms, and straighten towels on the racks in the bathroom. Then I needed to complete certain caring rituals toward rows of dolls and teddy bears, or they wouldn’t be able to sleep, nor would I. Then we’d have to go downstairs in pajama feet and tell mom and dad with a trembling voice, “I can’t sleep.” Of course, they’d be mad, but for awhile they agreed to come up and sit with me next to my little futon while I fell asleep.
safe safe not safe not safe safe safe safe is it better to just know that you’re not
no one is safe no one ever will be and it’s too late to make the earth safe you were born too late you got up too late you went to sleep too late and know you’ll feel the fatigue in your eyeballs and bones and hands and legs and neck and back and hips
You know that animated movie Wall-E? I basically want his job. I want to collect a huge organized collection of random things normally considered trash. I want to sell these random things and have a giant “make-shop” with sewing machines, long tables, machine parts, motors and gears, everything you lost and never thought you’d find again In the dystopian utopia of a solar punk dream, I have a special shop like that, and I stop for every thing on the ground to examine it, because there’s no rush. Other than the storms that sweep us away every few days, when the ships coming looking for us. Build the make-shop in the basement, with light coming in slanted through the ceiling, a place that’s secret and holy and creates from the remnants, saves them, cleans them, knows someone will need it back eventually.