The recycling & recycled self
It’s a windy day.
The front of my
house is a wind-
trap. At the end
of the day I will
have
a small
pile of
rubbish
to dispose of:
packaging from sweets,
crisps and drinks, mostly.
Probably jetsam from school
-kids, though I’ve never seen them drop anything there.
Sure enough, when I get home there’s what I’d call a small pile.
Which I collect.
I could put it straight in the wheelie-bin,
& go inside, close the door, wash my hands. I don’t, though.
I must’ve let something out of the bag
that I’ve gone and put the rubbish into. Or is it my imagination?
I go indoors with the bag;
imagining the bits of rubbish are found objects to make art out of. Like Dubuffet.
AND POETRY???
The words are also found objects just as material as the wrappers
I touch &
see. That
anyone can.
I am amazed at the materiality of words;
how they can be so here and now, also.
Even if the words are only wrappers
and what they contain, or what I once
thought they contained, has been consumed.
Has disappeared, anyway.
But they stay found. As if they want to.
They have been found, after all. No reason
for them to be unfound just now. Examples of
foundness, they have their place in the world. Deprived
of context, but not bereft, they live on as proudly as icons.
So I take both sets of wrappers, visual and verbal, and arrange them,
in accordance with a curious aesthetic of my own. And stick them down here.
And find myself fleetingly thinking
what it would be like
to be a found object.
Myself.