If You Have Rubbish, Rubbish Has You

IF YOU HAVE RUBBISH, RUBBISH HAS YOU

_{“The river of truth flows through the channels of errors.” – Rabindranath Tagore}

In my yard, right below the windows of my house and therefore seen as on palm, there lives an old woman always surrounded by dogs and cats whom she feeds. I wouldn’t mention this lady but for her one extraordinary trait of character – she’s extremely keen on all kinds of garbage which she piles into high stacks and scatters around her shabby hut. As I see her applying hard efforts to make way stumbling through the waste papers, pieces of rubber, broken boxes and bowls, holed tires and other unimaginable junk dragged over from all corners within her reach, accompanied by mocking gazes of neighbors smiling skulkingly and gossiping by her back, I can’t but think how symbolic she looks in this impetuous garbage addiction and unrestrained lust for keeping everything necessary and unnecessary close at hand.

Hey, did you ever meet such Queens and Kings of Trash in reality? We call them “Junkies” but where actually the border between “normal” and “abnormal”, “enough” and “too much” lies, if not solely in our subjective egocentric heads? When we laugh at some granny accumulating packs of papers in unseen quantities, why don’t we laugh then at collectors of paintings, medals, coins, butterflies or mail stamps, maybe these used papers are more precious for her than hundred collections of butterflies for you?? Or maybe, she’s just a hot fan of Spanish visual artist Alicia Martin making monumental installations from old books, or Polish Jewish political activist Gustav Metzger who (also, by using various sorts of garbage) developed the concept of Auto-Destructive Art?

Whatever it be the reason for appearance of Trash Kingdoms, it’s time to learn, your real enemy isn’t innocent papers, pieces of rubber, broken boxes and bowls… well, you got it – what’s looked upon as potential junk. The real enemy Mister Ghost Rubbish is immaterial and invisible, ever hiding, insidious, sneaking up and transforming to different forms. As in fantasy thriller “Ghost” with Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze, he slips everywhere, through doors and through walls; another his name is Time Sucker for Nothing, you now recognized him? Oh sure you’ve met! Once great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote: “The river of truth flows through the channels of errors“, I’d paraphrase his words into “The river of serenity flows through the channels of trash“, if we speak of Mister Rubbish in the immaterial sense. Indeed, this Ghost’s servants so elusively take various shapes and pretend being our friends that it’s truly a problem to detect them, saying nothing of pushing away.  

Mister Ghost Rubbish can be in two forms: the first, very active, Phantom Grizzly Bear – it’s what WAS ONCE NEEDED but not needed any more, and the second, quite lazy type, Phantom Panda – it’s what WAS NEVER NEEDED and not needed now. Now welcome to the field of examples. Let’s take a job. Imagine you’ve been hired for some work to earn for living and get new experience. Still years passed by and currently you feel as if stuck in a bog – no perspective on the horizon, no feeding of your ambitions, no advancement of mind. The job mattering a lot at the start turned into a burden, it won’t give more experience than it did neither will open better opportunities. Saying frankly, your job irreversibly mutated into assy rubbish and the situation will hardly change for recovery itself. It means if you value your life higher than by scale “bills paid – and I’m fine”, you have to somehow get rid of this load unless it squeezes many of your years into wasted portion of time.

Easy to say and hard to do in practice! A friend of mine even invented a psychological trick of “self-cutting” for that: he was cooperating with the company supplying him with orders, later he found a more lucrative customer but couldn’t say “no” to the first, cooperating with both. His problem was simple: greediness. He was overworking and undersleeping, perfectly realizing that no money is needed at the expense of health, that he must make a choice (in imagination he already did), that the first customer turned into unnecessary Time Eater and still… still was elementarily unable to force himself and refuse from the money offered. Each time he inly got up steam to skip off and accept orders only from the second client, and each time in vain – as soon as the first work-giver called, his mind immediately calculated potential money and that was a good end of good start, he took orders again and again. The Greedy Pants almost ended at hospital with nervous breakdown from overloading; fortunately for him, he happened to hear an anecdote about a boss who caught his wife cheating with employee, and took on his account. The next time the Customer Number One called, the anecdote follower said enigmaticly: “Mister Stone, I have to tell you something. Me and your wife… well, we were going to tell you this long before… Don’t know even how to say… Please don’t blame her, she isn’t guilty, it’s all me… It’s life, Mister Stone, please keep up, everything’s gonna be fine, I bear complete responsibility for what happened…” His fervent speech was interrupted, Mister Stone didn’t listen to the end. He never called since then and Greedy Pants won the battle with his temptation to earn more, won by the unfair scabby method of dishonoring a woman whom he didn’t know, not learning even how his jokey words blemished her fatum… That’s it, that’s how it works – sometimes Mister Rubbish falls off himself leaving you in the pleasant feeling of relief and easement, but sometimes you must dive into a real war, and at war, you know, all means are convenient. Because – it’s a fact – if you have Rubbish, Rubbish has you, and has in all senses (switch on imagination).  🙄  

Another Phantom Grizzly Bear, no less tricky and dangerous, is worn-out relations. Normally, healthy relations do good to both, either they’re saving or developing for friends or sexual partners. But what if the relations that were once a herbal liqueur, delighting and fondling, nourishing and allaying thirst, somehow turned into a poison torturing and loading, preventing free breathing and natural growing?? Wouldn’t it be healthier for them to break out, releasing into the space?

Such Grizzly Bears wander everywhere, wherever you cast an eye. Fear can also turn into trash named Paranoia, polluting your decisions with restrictions depictured in mind. In one of Ukrainian TV programs “World Inside Out”, in the Himalayas of Nepal, there occurred a crash of the plane in which the program presenter Dmytro Komarov had to fly, he changed his mind at the last moment. I guess if that happened to me I’d probably cry for the rest of the month and next a few months wouldn’t be better! Yet, this great Ukrainian journalist not only didn’t get infected with aerophobia and continued shooting his Nepal program as he’d planned before, he even took part in the search of crashed plane by climbing kilometers up into the mountains without special equipment and videoed the dreadful finding for including into the scenario! A rare talent to shake off fears without letting them hang on as stones! I don’t think, many can boast with this.

An example of lazy Phantom Panda is the Trap of Alien Influence already described in one of my previous articles. It’s someone’s dictating you what you should do or not, often accompanied with a kind of dependence, when you live under pressure finding uncomfortable (or impossible) to shake off the ballast and realizing soundlessly that something goes wrong.

It’s so difficult to distinguish rubbish from non-rubbish for the reason of fluidity, constant flexibility of statuses per life. Previously I believed in fate, in the Personal Book  of Deeds where main events are pre-written since birth; now don’t, I came to think any day may change everything, any new direction of movement may open new doors. That’s why we’ll never know what from our stuff will transform into garbage, but we’ll always feel its presence and releasing will give the sensations of high flight, as in Harry Styles’ amazing song “Sign of the Times”.

For come rain or shine – the place of rubbish is in the waste container!