Community objects

Homo sapiens sapiens has now come to mean homo faber--man that makes. We have for millennia made objects that have given us advantage over other people, that have asserted our power, that have asserted our "humanity." But as time has progressed, as we have decided that natural rights of freedom and liberty apply to (most) all of us (except those who we exploit so that the privileged can be "free"), we have grown more and more individualistic; libertarianism, while not explicitly stated, is rampant. But freedom has been conflated with doing whatever we want, and "owning" whatever we want. Indeed, we feel it a god-given right for each one of us to have access to all of the material possibilities that have been opened up because of technology. We feel that we must assert our individuality by owning as much as possible, by showing these objects off as symbols of status, by thinking that these objects mean we are "sticking it to the man."--that we do not need to rely on anyone for anything, that all of us can go to Home Depot, and do things ourselves. This individualism has resulted in the loss of human interaction--much of what we do now is mediated through object, rather than through physical contact with other humans. In our quest to own things for ourselves, in our assumption that each one of us is entitled to each one of the possessions we have, we have created an economy based on the collective rape of the Earth to satisfy our individual wants and purported needs.

But this is not the whole story. We have asserted our individuality in some ways, and given it away in another--in ecologically and socially degrading ways. While we assert our independence through materialism, we are watched by Big Brother, we are under constant surveillance, and we live in the fear of speaking our critically against our government and corporations that have constantly exploited this land and this earth to keep themselves alive. Liberty and justice for all are words spoken, but not internalised and acted upon. I wonder then, are there ways in which we can be human, without destroying the planet? How can we build communities and relationships with the Earth that are spatially close-knit, rather than destroy them? May one way be through community objects?

When I say community, I mean community among people, close-knit, within contexts of our local environments. Just like community spaces, like churches, markets, and parks, are there ways in which we can redefine objects such that they are owned by us as a collective, rather than us as individuals? What would that mean for the preservation of objects, and our compulsion to buy more and more? I do not know, but what I do know is that those things and spaces that are common to us all, we generally wish never to be degraded. Scale is important, and objects are for the most part on the human scale. Although we continually trash national parks and landmarks, no one would want a trashed church or a trashed local park. Rather, when the scale of our spaces, and our objects becomes more tractable, we seek to cherish them more and more. The Earth may be too big for each one of us to wrap our minds around. Another plastic bag in the ocean, another computer bought, another flight taken, we think is a drop in the ocean. But a plastic bag seen flailing in our neighbourhood park, an oil spill in our local river, a blighted home we are repulsed by.

I remember while growing up in India, the textbooks that I used, the uniforms I wore, were those that were handed down to me from my elder cousins and friends. Objects were saved and treated kindly, because they could then be bequeathed to the next generation. The textbooks were already marked up and written in, but that was okay, because I still learned from them. The clothes were worn, but that's okay, because it didn't matter how crisply new my shirt was, I still went to school. I feel as if community objects built community. So much of what we do now as individuals is because of a constantly temporary urge for the new. If you were to look back on your life, did it really matter whether you bought that new deck of cards or that new toaster? Or do you think your euchre night would have still been fun with an old deck of cards, your stomach still full and satisfied with a used toaster? And how much better off would the health of our Earth be because of such behaviour? Wendell Berry, in his essay A Statement Against the War in Vietnam writes,

In spite of our constant lip service to the cause of conservation, we continue to live by an economy of destruction and waste, based on extravagance and ostentation rather than need; we can see no reason to be saving, because we cannot imagine the future of the earth or the lives and the needs of those who will inherit the earth after us.

Heirloom living

It is late August, and you know what that means in a college town...move out. (Most moving in college towns happens in the beginning and end of summer. In Ann Arbor, that means in late April/early May, and late August/early September.) Walking the beautiful streets of Ann Arbor, it is difficult to pass a couple of houses without tons and tons of stuff piled along the sidewalk. This is the stuff that people are choosing to discard because they just don't want to deal with lugging it to their next living destination. As you probably know, most all of this stuff is perfectly functional and usable. In the beginning of last summer, I was taking my early morning walk to the bus stop when I came across such a large pile of stuff. I saw another man going through the heaps, and we started talking about all the stuff that we've found in the move-out season. The man said, "You wouldn't believe the things I've found in such piles before. I've found four iPods and two laptops, all working...it is especially those East Asian kids...they leave everything behind when they leave."

Growing up in India, things were sparse, not because we couldn't "afford" things, but because my parents wanted to teach us that you don't need much to live, and that we must always strive to live simply but wholly. Most of India is a hand-me-down society. I would wear the school uniforms my elder brother wore, I would use the books my elder sister used (and then pass them on to someone else who would use them for a year, and give them back to us because my sister would be ready to use them, given she was a couple grades/standards behind me), and so on. And when things fall apart, they are mended back together generally. The only new things we'd get (apart from maybe a new pant and shirt each year, maybe) would be new notebooks. It would always be so exciting to open those new notebooks.

Wendell Berry has said we are not materialistic enough. What he means by this is that we do not value all of the materials we have invested in as much as we should and we do not recognise what has gone into them. In talking to many people here, suggesting that maybe what they are looking for is available at a second-hand store, they say that they "are fine with buying new things," which I take to mean, "I don't want anything used." I fail to see how used things are gross, or how they are less functional than new things, of course barring for planned obsolescence. All of this comes in a culture of transience, and its effects spill over onto human relationships, and relationships to place. A culture of transience fails to attach meaning to anything, which allows us constantly devalue and denigrate what we have.

Lia wrote beautifully about meaning, material and heirloom living. She wrote,

"You can have all the objects in the world.  So what?  Is your life so much better (than someone who has no objects) because you have an adroid phone, or a big screen TV, or this season’s newest sweater that you will only wear 5 times?  You are the one that gives them meaning.  You are in control of that choice.

There is so much unused stuff in this world.  Why not try and use it as much as possible?  Why not find and appreciate these objects, build that meaning?  Human ingenuity gives us the power to make objects, but I don’t think that’s what makes us human.  I think it is instead our human capacity to appreciate, to build webs of meaning, to be responsible, and clever, and artistic with the raw materials of life."

On the relationship between adaptability and what we have

With a changing climate and growing scarcity, I wonder how adaptable we may be to what nature throws in our way. In the future, maybe we will have more hurricanes of more and more power. Maybe precipitation will increase, and the banks of the Mississippi will burst with more frequency, with more exuberance. As I mentioned in a previous post, much of what we have done to nature has been against its tide. We have held back waters that want to flow. Furthermore, we have invested much of our energies, time, and spirit into creating objects that constantly seek our attention to be maintained, while also changing our present such that we can imagine no future without them.

I cannot speak for the past, and would not know how different the past was, but I think that today, the man-made, physical objects that surround us have become so much a part of our existence that our fate is inextricably tied to their fate, not to mention to the complexities of increasing unwieldy social structures such as large government. We have created for ourselves a world of dependencies and proxies. What is not difficult to notice, however, is that with large government, important actions that do need to be taken are almost always held back by inertia. With physical objects we cannot comprehend how life was possible without them. We have become less adaptable to change, in a sense, or to a world without those objects. (This is not to deny the changes that we've experienced in the past few months because of things, dependent on physical objects such as computers and power lines, like Facebook and Twitter.) But it is fair to say that these physical objects are the cause of much ecological degradation, and our continued dependence on them will continue to degrade nature, especially because of a lack of durability. More fundamentally, however, I believe that we must face up to the challenges of a scarce future by changing our decisions today.

I wonder how adaptable we are given all that surrounds us. If we had to live with fewer hours of electricity, could we? Of course, many do not want to envision such a scenario, and then of course prepare for the scarcity by trying to invent something new. While this is possibly an argument for minimalism, I believe more fundamentally that we need an understanding and mindfulness that the more we invest in static, stationary, physical objects, the less and less adaptable we become to our lives without them. For example, the more reliant we are on GPS, the less aware we become of direction such that we may lose our way without GPS. I raise the issue so because what we have today is what we present to tomorrow, yet it is hard to deny that the future is full of scarcity, of fights over water, of fights over minerals. We can avoid this, I have no doubt.

The engineering of modification

I apologise again for not having posted yesterday - class is leaving little time to write.

I want to add on to previous posts on objects and materials (here, here, here, here, here). In my last post, I wrote about the modification of engineering. One thing that current design, engineering and building education don't really address is what can be called modularity. We think of objects as single use, and they are built for single purposes. Vast amounts of energy and materials are invested in such objects, and significant ecological harm comes from the manufacturing. When one thing becomes "obsolete," (here, too) there is very little chance that the same components will be reused to make another object. Now, I have written many times that the most significant steps towards decreased ecological harm will come through behavioural and ethical changes, not newer objects. Yet, I understand that we have created objects and structures that surround our lives, and become part of them; I can appreciate that. Modularity, or adaptability is a better word, may help us design objects to be taken apart easily, put back together in a different manner, and still provide the change that is needed. Several issues arise from this, that I will address.

If we do create objects and spaces, how might they be modular? One interesting idea I came across the other day was at the art opening of Andy Kem (who we found out about on a random trip to Russell Industrial - a space for artists and craftspeople). His designs feature interlocking pieces, not pieces that are solidly put together. This means that you can take them apart easily, and put them back together, without tools. Here's an example of a rocking chair.

Now, of course, many things we have, like furniture, are built in this way. But many things are not, including the spaces we inhabit. Laura Smith mentioned how interior design is additive. In design, most time designs are not meant to be taken apart to conform to changing wants/needs. Therefore, we need to make things from virgin materials. But I wonder if we built simple, basic things in a modular way, whether we would be happy with what those objects can provide. For example, if we have an object that is placed one way, would we be able to change our perspective and bring some freshness to it by placing it another way? Maybe just tipped over? I know I might be sounding like some artist here, which I am not, and I am not compelled to always be surrounded by new objects, but many people are.

One issue that may arise in this is that it is difficult to design something for a purpose if we can't envision what that purpose may be. This I have addressed in some posts about limits of the human mind. But I do think that given all the physical things we have, we must conform our wants to fit the limitations and capabilities of these objects.

Ecological degradation stems from the way in which we physically modify the environment, violently extracting materials and killing trees, driven by ideologies and ethics that dictate such behaviour. But in the end, we are making the choices to physically modify the environment in destructive ways. If we just thought of such destruction, and didn't act on the thoughts, much of nature would still be intact.

On framing: consumption vs. trash

Having been involved in environmental activism on campus for years now, the issue of the framing of issues is never too far from my mind. Framing the issue in the right way without compromising on your values can lead to more persuasive arguments. Today's post is on the issue of framing. Case study: consumption vs. trash.

Consumption is complicated. As defining a feature as it is in our behaviour, consumption is vague in its physicality. Consumption is solely an action. It is not something that we can touch or smell. The fact that we can't feel consumption, but rather that its existence is conveyed through the exchange of physical objects, makes it more of a mental and emotional characteristic. At the same time there is indeed a spectrum of consumption, and some consumption must occur to stay alive - with each breath I am taking I am consuming oxygen. Furthermore, many of us think that consuming leads to a happier and more meaningful life, and maybe it does - I can buy a cell phone so that I can keep in touch with my family. At the same time, we live in a society in which people are judged by their consumption habits such that they have physical objects to show for them. Therefore, it may seem very difficult to persuade people to stop consuming.

Yet the dire state of our environment is plain for all to see, and consumption has played an all too heavy hand in this state. There has been ever-increasing talk about how we live in a "materialistic" and "consumerist" world, and that we need to "consume" less if there is any hope that we avoid catastrophic climate change, or if there is any hope that we move to a more sustainable world. Probably more often than not though, we have been told that we need to consume "differently" - we are now being persuaded to buy "green" cars and "environmentally friendly" computers, which are, of course, purely oxymorons. The issue of consumption has been skirted to make us feel less guilty about what we buy. All of this increased consumption is to aid "progress" and "development;" I've written about previously, the concept of sustainability has been consciously morphed into that of "sustainable development," or in a sense, "sustainable consumption."

On the other hand, we have the problems that are borne of consumption, trash being on of them. "Trash" is both an action and an object. Trash isn't something vague or unnoticeable; it is not emotional or mental (although for me it has become so). Rather, trash is a physical manifestation of a mental and emotional construct - consumption - just like the objects we consume are physical manifestations. The objects we consume may be adding some "value" into our lives, but unless you are dealing in the business of trash, trash adds no value to what it is you consume. Instead, trash is a nuisance. Trash is felt and experienced viscerally; the fact that trash is visceral therefore makes it a wonderful metaphor of ecological degradation perpetrated by humans.

To me, the problems of trash, consumption, climate change and unsustainability are one and the same. Yet in order to have a broader impact, and in order to motivate individual action to aid the environment, what may be the appropriate framework to help guide more people? The connotations of consumption may not be wholly negative. In a sense, there is no way I can stop consuming physical things in existence in nature, particularly air, water, and food. But trash has only negative connotations associated with it. More importantly, adequately addressing trash necessarily addresses the issue of consumption - minimizing trash and waste minimizes consumption automatically. Gone are the issues of deciding whether or not to buy product X because it may be greener than product Y. The fact that trash is the result of that consumption choice obviates any need for further thought.

(Thank you to Professor Johnson and Dr. Shriberg for planting these ideas in me.)

Objects and materials: Who worked for it?

It should come as no surprise to you that a majority, if not most, of the objects and materials that we use daily have required that someone or something has expended effort and energy and time to make those objects and materials. Effort is expended not only in actually making those objects and materials, but also in purchasing them for home or for someone. I believe that our tendency to think of some things as "disposable" stems from who expends the effort in finally getting those objects and materials to you. It seems like the last exchange of resources (generally monetary) tells us to a great extent whether or not we would be okay with throwing something away.

I want to illustrate this tendency with the example of a plastic trinket. The hydrocarbons used in the plastic trinket were probably extracted from some oil field by several workers, then shipped or transported by several workers, then processed and made into the plastic trinket by several workers, then brought to a store by a driver, then stocked by a store employee. This trinket can finally be purchased by you for yourself or your family. On the other hand, you may purchase the trinket for someone else. If that person knows you, she might keep the trinket, at least for a while, recognising that your money (earned through hopefully "legitimate" ways) went into the trinket. There is a sentimentality that comes along with the trinket. If that person doesn't know you, she might not mind throwing it away if it is cluttering their lives. On the other hand, imagine yourself as the recipient of an object, say a plastic cup. You've chosen to use this plastic cup to drink water from, say during a talk or a seminar, or at a random fraternity party. Clearly, you have not worked for the cup. All you've done is pretty much shown up to the event, and there sat an unused plastic cup perfect for quenching your thirst. Now, I know people have a tendency to use "disposable" objects in their homes that they themselves have purchased, and have no qualms of throwing them away. I could of course go through the various permutations and combinations of scenarios, but that really isn't the point of this post. If you've sweat for something, you just won't feel as compelled to throw it away as compared to the case when someone else, especially someone unknown to you, has sweat for it.

We have the tendency to only think of immediacy - who was the last person that I associate this object with? We don't seem to think of everything done along the way by other people to make it possible to have the objects that surround us. These people are in no way different than you are. Their effort is every much as important to the object as is the last person's money. How might we better value these efforts? I guess this is the cause of most problems that face us - we only think of ourselves and our immediate ones in a world that is clearly a web of interactions.

Objects and materials: What compels us to throw away?

The other day, Steve and I went to see Professor Michael Griffin, the NASA Administrator under President Bush from 2005 to 2009, give a talk about complex systems on North Campus. Although he is has made some quite naive statements about climate change as you probably know, the talk was nonetheless fascinating and story-like. I can write about his talk, which focused on the interfaces between engineering disciplines, at a later time. But I want to write a bit about something that stuck me particularly strongly during the whole experience.

Generally, when someone as important as him gives a talk, there are refreshments - grilled vegetables, dips, cookies, and drinks. In this case, the drinks could be had in these really nice plastic cups (I didn't use one, of course, but I did see others use them). They were thick and solid, unlike those SOLO cups you might have had your last frat beer in. The plastic was clear and the plastic was fully transparent. I wondered, "Why would someone throw this away?" It seemed to me that if you decided to keep this plastic cup, it would probably last you a while, until it cracked or got crushed. You could have not one, but several drinks from this cup. You could keep the cup at your desk, and when you wanted a drink, you could fill it up and drink from it. In all senses, the cup was such that it made me want to keep the cups, and it made me want to tell others to keep their cups. But the cups were inevitably thrown away, after single uses.

Here are two pictures of cups. Which cup do you think is the plastic cup, and which one is the glass cup? I have cropped the bottoms, because the bottoms will give the answer away.

I guess it is still easy to figure out which one is plastic and which one is glass, but if you closely look at the cups, they have similar thicknesses, they function in the same way - both have the capacity and ability to hold liquids such that they don't leak. But it seems like there is something within us, likely socially defined, that makes us think that throwing away one of them is okay - people might call that one "disposable" - while throwing the other one away just doesn't make sense. I will try to think about why over the next few days.

Feature: Waste Land, Vik Muniz, and consciousness

(Potential spoiler alert!) There has been much written about trash and waste, and it seems like there are several documentaries and books about this issue. I have been almost saturated with thinking about trash, with my creativity being challenged day by day in trying to write about trash from different perspectives. I am not the most creative person out there. But other people are much more creative, and have different backgrounds that lends them different ways of viewing the exact thing I have been thinking about now for ten months (ten months today!). It is always wonderful to come across these thoughts, visions and projects, and I came across one just a couple weekends ago.

Matt and I made it to The Detroit Institute of Arts for the Detroit Film Theatre, where they show beautiful movies, documentaries, and shorts, on the 16th of January. What caught my eye was a screening of the documentary Waste Land, which is about an art project (turned out to be way more than art) by Vik Muniz on the people how pick through trash at one of the world's largest landfills to collect recyclables that can be sold. Here's a synopsis from the website:

"Filmed over nearly three years, WASTE LAND follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of “catadores”—self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz’s initial objective was to “paint” the catadores with garbage..."

Vik's intentions are clear - he wants to change people's lives with the objects they are surrounded with on a daily basis. There is no better group of people to work with than those that work at a landfill. As I've mentioned previously (here, here and here), trash is visceral and tangible, so much so that we don't want to be around it, although some people are around it continuously. Some people are around it so much so that they are desensitised to it, just like people that work at one of the world's largest landfills, where objects and discards of humanity flow in like an unabated wave. Vik initially went into the project thinking it was just going to be just that, an art project - as a photographer, he was going to make multimedia photographs of the workers, with recyclables in the trash defining the human features of his subjects. He formed connections with some of the workers there (extremely thoughtful people), and had them work on their own photographs. Please click here and go to "Pictures of Garbage (2009)" to see their incredible work.

What ended up happening changed both Vik and the workers:

"However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives. Director Lucy Walker (DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND, BLINDSIGHT, COUNTDOWN TO ZERO) has great access to the entire process and, in the end, offers stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit." 

I am not going to talk much about the movie, because you should really just watch it (and you can read about it here), but what Vik essentially did was raising into consciousness, at a level higher than visibility, the objects and problems that surround us. This is indeed what the message of this blog so far has been: raise into consciousness and awareness the knowledge and problems that our world is facing, and think about how this problem is just another manifestation of deeper issues - disrespect for Earth and disrespect for people, present and future.

Guest blog #8: Lia Wolock - A tour through my apartment and memories

"Let’s take a visit to my apartment.

I know.  We just met.  Things seem to be moving too fast.  But don’t worry.  This is just a social (/environmental justice) visit.

I admit, I have a fairly liberal take on what is appropriate in terms of decorating.  Things don’t, you know, match exactly.  But everyone who comes over finds my house cozy.  They feel like they’re in a home.  Sure, there’s a part of me that would love to have a house full of well-orchestrated, tastefully chosen IKEA furniture in a classy color scheme, but, there’s so much more to consider when we create the spaces in which we live.

My house is full of memories, full of love.  Come this way.  Wait.  Could you take off your shoes?  It’s very snowy outside.  Thanks.

Now if you look just to your right, here’s my jewelry box.  Cute, right?  Deep brown wood with stained glass doors.  It sat in my parents’ house for years, gathering dust in the room my 4-years older sister, Rachel, hasn’t used in years but never manages to fully vacate.  Really, though, it belonged to Jana, the oldest of us three daughters.  I don’t know where she got it from.  Bat Mitzvah gift maybe?  I can see it, sitting just so in my childhood memories, on the dresser that used to seem so tall to me.  Then it seemed to be full of adult things, magically so.  Anyway, lately I was getting really frustrated trying to keep my necklaces organized and untangled.  I was home over a break, saw it sitting there, considered how Rachel hasn’t really lived there in years, and decided to just ask her if I could take it.  Now it sits near my bed, holds my jewelry, anchors me back to those childhood memories.

The art?  Yeah.  This one was an old print my friend Angie, now a graphic designer, did for an undergrad art class.  She was going to throw it out because she said this line here was a mistake during the printing process, but I think it’s beautiful.  I think it’s fire the woman is walking through; it’s supposed to illustrate an old fairy tale.  The piece next to it?  I found it in my parents’ basement.  I think it was my Aunt Lillian’s.  She was an artist, but she didn’t make this piece.  She worked mainly in basketstowards the end of her life.  But I like the reminder of her, of having here something that she chose and liked.

These boxes, these book cases, all the art, they used to belong to my friends, my family.  The stories that linger in their curves and angles, their material existence—stories of their acquisition, the lives they led before they came to live in my house, the objects they held or sat on top of—they fill my home with a sense of context, of meaning.  Sure, I have new things, too.  And some of this furniture belongs to the company from which I’m leasing this apartment.  And those new things have stories, too.  These are stories of how they were made, the resources that went into their process, the mental power that went into their planning and execution, the humans who produced, packaged, shipped, and sold these items.  But I much prefer the texture of the stories that accompany these objects that used to live with the people I love.

Every time a new product is made, as you well know, a great deal of waste is made.  Waste we have the luxury to forget about.  Then it is packaged in more waste, travels halfway around the world eating up fuel, is sold to us, handed over with a plastic bag and a receipt, or a big box.  Sure, I’ll recycle whatever I can from all that mess, but why not use what we have?  We have SO MUCH.  So many new objects made without rhyme or reason.  Do they add to our lives?  I’m not saying I’m innocent; I love objects, too.  Sometimes these are newly made and utterly pointless objects.  But what could happen if instead of valuing newness in our objects, we valued their stories, the way they connect us to other humans?

Let’s reorient ourselves. To see the waste that a new product makes rather than its glitz and glamor.  To see the land where we dug our landfill in as just as precious as Niagara Falls, or the redwood forests on the west coast.  Let’s think about the amount of energy, etc. it takes to recycle an item as itself a precious, finite resource.  Let’s begin to appreciate objects less for their fetishistic capacity—the sense of magic we have about them that they will somehow make our lives better—and more for the tree that grew so that it could be cut down to be turned into the object, for the friend who used to love the object, for the way objects can reflect not only the human ingenuity that allows us to imagine and build objects, but also for how they can reflect human responsibility to this earth.

You can have all the objects in the world.  So what?  Is your life so much better (than someone who has no objects) because you have an adroid phone, or a big screen TV, or this season’s newest sweater that you will only wear 5 times?  You are the one that gives them meaning.  You are in control of that choice.

There is so much unused stuff in this world.  Why not try and use it as much as possible?  Why not find and appreciate these objects, build that meaning?  Human ingenuity gives us the power to make objects, but I don’t think that’s what makes us human.  I think it is instead our human capacity to appreciate, to build webs of meaning, to be responsible, and clever, and artistic with the raw materials of life.

I’m sorry.  Here I am babbling away, and I didn’t even offer you anything to drink.  Did you want some tea?  I’ll bring it to you in a silly mug with a festive palm tree design.  They used to belong to Alana."

~Lia 

Why do we choose not to be surrounded by beauty?

Ralph Williams, in his last lecture at the University, spoke of beauty. He said that something is beautiful when two conditions are met - 1) you never want that thing to die (or go away), and 2) you want to tell other people about it. "Look at this flower!" "Look at that tree of a thousand colours!" You want your bed to be made of them, and you want to be showered in that beauty. But how many of us would say that the structures we construct for bodies and our minds, and the places we choose to spend our lives in are beautiful? If you take a drive along any highway or thoroughfare, especially in the US, the roads are engulfed by objects of humanity that are truly not beautiful - box stores and strip malls, flashy neon lights and billboards, and advertisements for personal injury lawyers with cheesy pick up lines of sorts. These objects are square, drab, plastic and ungraceful. Indeed, these structures are built for our "convenience." These structures are not constructed for our appreciation and pleasure. Just take a look at the buildings on North Campus, or the hallway of GG Brown.

 
How many of us would say that the trash we create is beautiful? Would I want to show people the trash I was responsible for? No! That's why we enclose the trash in containers that are opaque. We want our trash to die (or go away). If you look at a pile of trash, or a wrapper torn to reveal the granola bar inside, would anyone say that the wrapper is beautiful? The contrast between this wrapper resting on dewy grass with a crunchy leaf bearing witness could not be more stark.

Is this Styrofoam container with Panda Express inside of it beautiful?

 

What about this plastic bag? 

 

We must remember that the landscapes we inhabit were not square and full of plastic before they were bulldozed and modified. These tracts were beautiful and vast, and lives were lived here, in beauty. I don't think anyone could describe anything that happens or exists in nature as ugly. Indeed, something may be devoid of life and barren, but maybe lonely or uncompromising would be adjectives we would use. Do we have to give up beauty to live in today's world? Our understanding of what it means to exist in this world and our observations of it are defined by what we create as people, rather than what is defined by nature. And for all of our efforts to replicate nature, we will never come close to making anything physical as beautiful as a prairie or a tree. If we did want to incorporate more beauty in the objects and spaces we create, how would that affect the things we choose to throw away, like trash?


Here are some words from Lia Purpura's piece, There Are Things Awry Here, from Orion.

"The flags are frozen. They're fifty feet high but don't move in wind and they carry no sentiment, like "these we hoist high over our small town/farm/ranch to keep alive spirit, memory, fervor..." The flags have names: Ryan's, Outback, Hooters, IHOP, Waffle House. Wal-Mart on a far - I'd like to say hill but that's out of the question, the hill's been dozed, subdued into rise."

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What was here, that a body moved through it?

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Back in my room I can't shake the sensation (despite my dandelion in a plastic cup, curtains wide open, basket of apples to naturalize things). A strangeness, an insistence is hovering. The strangeness makes me say aloud to myself - something had to be here, something had been.

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Real land is never sad in its vastness, lost in its solitude. Left alone, cycles dress and undress it, chill-and-warm so it peaks, hardens, slides, swells. Real land hosts - voles, foxes, cicadas. Fires, moss, thunder. Rolls or gets steep. Sinks,sops, and sprouts. But this land didn't read. It babbled the way useless things babble - fuzzy bees with felt smiles, bejeweled and baubley occasional plaques, ConGRADulation mugs/frames/figurines. Capped, crusted, contained, so laden with stuff - how can it breathe?

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Here, near the Cobb, is the land where Mac wrote, in Fins and Feathers, a little piece called "Our London":

I remember the sun setting over the last rugged corner of Britain in a blaze of crimson magnificence, that we saw when the ship sailed in August. I remember seeing the lights of Toronto start to blink from a small island on Lake Ontario. But best of all—I remember London.

Though I am many thousands of miles away, I see her constantly, not as she stands now, bruised and battered, but as she was when I spent my adolescent initiation within her walls; and I am sorry that I was not able to appreciate her then as I do now. For in those days, Regent Street just signified to me the roads that led from Piccadilly Circus to Oxford Street. Charing Cross was just a station that served my purpose in going south. The same applied to Fleet Street, Cheapside and Soho, and a host of other fine places . . .

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I knew in this vacancy something asserted. Something strange—that is, real—and insistent was here. The land didn’t mean to be torn and tar covered, wasn’t meant to sprout stock farmers, farm women, and ranchers. The land asked to be considered, and seriously. The land wanted to speak—past the bunkers of rolled insulation, past the earth-eating backhoes and yellow concoction my farmer (okay, working stiff, bare hands in the poison, then wiping his nose) force-fed the grass. Here, the land must have been green by the runways. Some of the big trees still here must have seen it. Yes, it must’ve been lush once, before hotels started turf wars along Marriott/Hilton lines, and thick vines choked the trees, and the tractors came and the hot blacktop poured, so the SKUs of Big K—hundreds of thousands—might take root and flourish.