Putting the Garbage Out

Feb 4 2020

The hulking municipal truck

stutters up the street

between slumbering houses,

diesel gunning, brakes squealing

with each start and stop.

The grinding

of its big hydraulic compactor

shatters the heavy calm,

like an alarm clock from hell

in the bleak early hours

of this dull December day.

While the men, bundled-up against the cold

and in their bright orange vests

jump nimbly on and off,

wrestling heavy receptacles

that have been frozen in place,

emptying packed cans

into its dripping steel maw,

an unhinged jaw

that swallows whole.

Then tossing them, like afterthoughts

into mounds of soiled snow.

I appreciate the bad backs

frost-nip

ungodly hours

wrangling garbage exacts.

But also envy

this humble but virtuous job.

The camaraderie.

The simplicity of their task.

And the immediate satisfaction

of a thing completed,

a hard-and-fast end

you can measure and touch.

Because in this life, it seems, nothing is ever done.

All day, nailing jelly to the wall

pushing boulders uphill,

trying to please

perpetual malcontents.

And how gratifying is this;

to put the garbage out at the curb

the night before

only to find it whisked away

early the next morning,

seamlessly discarded

out of sight and mind

who knows where.

Well worth the disturbance

of the shattered morning calm,

this small weekly act

of unburdening.

And so reassuring

to see the moving gears

of civilization at work,

keeping order

in this messy bewildering world.

Needless to say, I'm idealizing. But this is the gratification not only of manual labour, but of cleaning in general. That it enables you to stand back, hands on hips, and survey a job well done: something completed and quantifiable, along with the satisfied tiredness of virtuous work.

My reference to out of sight and mind is, of course, ironic. Because this is the basis of our entire consumer culture: that many of the costs – the “externalities”, as economists say – are hidden. I mean the exploited labour, the waste of obsolescence and accumulation and inefficiency, the environmental cost. Our profligate lifestyles generate all this garbage (much of it not “garbage” at all, but potentially of high value if we had a system that could repurpose it), and it simply disappears each week – whisked away – as if it never existed. Presumably land-filled or incinerated. But better not to know.