What People Leave Behind
The Things that Survive Us, Explain Us
From the time I was very young I’ve been fascinated by artifacts people leave behind. Some have called it garbage, others speak of entire family dumps. Much of what I once found has been left behind in another round of my own disposal. But I have kept some special mementos. And what I’ve found is that they almost always have a connection to mankind that doesn’t change over time.
There are some things that show up in a continual cycle of waste, and sometimes transformation. They reside in places I’ve had the privilege of visiting — old homesteads, the backlots of thrift stores, a neighbor’s lean-to, a bar ditch along a highway. There are always individual finds, things people keep for no good reason that I know. But there is consistency in the mix if you look long enough. And I would predict it is happening right now in the 2020–21 pandemic.
Some favorite things:
Cookbooks, or a few pages from
Broken dog collars
Rusted cans
Family pictures, particularly children
Lamps
Knives
Marbles
Newspapers
Gloves
Buttons
Fragmented dishes and silverware
An occasional ring
Nuts and bolts
An accumulation of receipts
Broken glass
What this tells me in looking over a broad cross-section of American discards, perhaps for as much as a century of our progress, is that we would rather keep a dog’s memory in our heart than on a leash, will attempt to fix an object rather than initially dispose of it, and without fail choose to prepare food to our own liking. We would rather take every ounce of music with us on our life’s journey than keep an emotion-filled ring, and a good knife and a pair (or even a single) glove seem to suggest protection at all cost. We owe people throughout our lives and choose not to forget at least some of our least explicable transactions. And we remain fascinated by the news of our time, particularly headlines. Breaking news in our everyday life seems to suggest we feel we’ve lived at the most important time in American history. Our children should know this, because it’s their pictures that tell me who is most important in people’s lives.
And so I believe we will continue to keep to the basics on this list for a good long time, not so much because we can’t shift our focus, but because these things stand the test of time. An old bicycle can weather many winters, an IPad, not so much. Marbles, those orbs that still fascinate some of us and buttons that, without a doubt, give us a look at culture and era will, no doubt, become less easily found, while tie-wraps, electronic tidbits, neck scarves and hoodies, and the overindulgence in plastic containers will haunt us long into a worried future. One pandemic isn’t going to stop us from throwing away our perceived trash, including disposable masks, which will move throughout our landscape for months, maybe years to come.
It is likely we may compose another list of waste that revolves around this moment in time and defines our notions of debris for the future. Dogs became our best friends because of the dumps of prehistoric nomads. Maybe we will bring another species around to our side through our current choice of throw-aways. Or maybe we will finally convince ourselves we can no longer afford to dispose of our grief in overabundance. Maybe the time of renewed pandemics, even the threat of them, will guide us into a new phobia. And that phobia will be re-purposing for those we love. After all these years of observing our increasingly expensive trash, I hope so.
