What Kind of Garbage Would That Make?

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Liza to the group on 28 May 2015.

And Steffi's hand, too

Where to begin!

I like all of this. I especially like your idea that the more packaged garbage you buy, the closer you are to qualifying for packaged nothingness. Gold-Member/Street-Cred status. Perhaps with the first batch of packaged garbage, the buyer also receives a packaged Frequent Buyer card. Only instead of punching holes in the same card with each subsequent purchase, we just send out a brand new packaged card with an additional punched-hole in it. Eventually, we'll have punched so many holes in the card that the card will be a hole. Or, in other words, packaged nothingness. How gritty! How raw, how sacred, how holey! Blessed are the hungry, for theirs is the kingdom of garbage.

Thou must waste abundantly in order to be-holed this abundance of waste, ye loyal customers. In proliferating, ye shall eradicate!

This all makes perfect sense to me (but don't worry--not too much sense). Over-consumption of trash, after all, fills us fully with an existential emptiness. This is a wasting that is also an abundance.

"For we on garbage-bins hath fed, and shrunk to ilks of nothingness" (Coleridge, kind of).

The more we eat the more we shrink. The more we replenish, the more we diminish.

My thinking is a bit scattered right now from a succession of strange, long days, so I’m going to let Bob Moorehead summarize part of what I’m trying to get at here:

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less. We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time. 

The quote is quite long, but the following non-sequential excerpts (that I've formatted sequentially--I am a shameful academic) are worthy of mention:

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've conquered outer space but not inner space. We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships; more kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom; a time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.

Relating this oppositional accord that Moorehead's laid out to the gar(b)age sale that we've laid out, the less we feel, the more we buy. The more we buy, the less we value. The less we value, the more we waste. The more we waste, the fuller we are. The fuller we are, the emptier we are. And so it goes forever.

It could also be said that the more Carlton cleans up the garbage, the more of a mess he makes. Isn't this, ultimately, what Gilbert is doing to the city of Detroit, too? (More to come on Gilbert's own cunning methods of displacing the city's "garbage" in a future message.)

So, then, it only makes sense that the charity's top benefactors earn their way to packaged nothingness. They have gorged themselves on the garbage until "(n)othing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck (Detroit?), boundless and bare" (“Ozymandias”--and more Gilbert symbolism).  How commendable! I feel like there should also be packaged plaques. Or maybe once they've cleared the trash from their specific lots and therefore achieved nothingness, they get the honor and glory of sending their own trash to the same curb they helped "clean up." You know, to give someone else the same opportunity. To ritualize the process. Maybe, if they're feeling extra high on charity, they could even sponsor a poor neighborhood kid or something. Carlton Farthington, after all, is fo' the chilrun.

Moving along, this all waywardly circles back to that sketch of Carlton from a few weeks back. Art, perhaps it makes a bit more sense now in both its original context (DeLillo’s Underworld) and my recontextualization of it (White’s Sweet World).

The original quote,

Marian and I saw products as garbage even when they sat gleaming on store shelves, yet unbought. We didn’t say, "What kind of casserole will that make?" We said, "What kind of garbage will that make?"

The recontextualized quote in regards to all of the above:

In the sketch, Carlton doesn’t think about the delicious pie he could make from the apple because he’s too busy thinking about the garbage he will make. And now, as he packages this garbage and sends it off to others, they no longer ask themselves, 'What kind of garbage will this make?' They ask themselves 'What kind of nothingness will this make?' Where once there was garbage, now there is a hole. They see only the absence of the garbage.

Not to probe too much deeper into this, but the sketch could also be interpreted as the way people utilize the gleaming new products that drop from the Apple tree at genetically modified speeds. Though in theory this technology could be used to deepen our connections with others and to engage in the world in innovative ways, we most widely use it to disconnect and disengage. We’ve turned an object with great potential to be an agent of positive social change into an agent of unsocial change. Or, to paraphrase Moorehead, our computers have not taught us how to communicate but rather how to copy. Repost, Retweet, Recycle.

The sexualization of the apple as a women’s body in the sketch also ties into this garbage theme, but I’ll save that for another time.

In the interim, think: degradation, objectification, disposability, the Big Emptiness, womb envy, and on and on.  

Sounds like a riveting segue into my next e-mail regarding my thoughts on the relationship shared between the wild band of savage sisters and Arthur. Hmmm....

All of that, and more, tomorrow!

When
I will sing a song of garbage,

Liza