Upon Looking a-Back Over Spring Break in Elephant Architecture

Though I still was working, there was an exceptional peace of mind to clearing out the space outside of work. I have taken this semester in my Psych class to finish up some looming, untied ends in my personal and financial life; more or less just making my space at home more liveable thus creating a therapeutic environment to be in. Monday came ‘round and I was biking home from work passed the Garbage Men at work on their rounds. Thank the gods. Our last Recycling bin had been destroyed somehow and I have ordered three more for the 5-8 tenants who live in my building. I am going through the Spring Cleaning feelings and ready for a fresh start this season. The Garbage Man stopped at a college student’s apartment, emptied the trash and saw the recycling bin had two pizza boxes in it, and left it. He and I made eye contact and he sort of gave me the wink that he and I were in some sort of “club” together and that “we know how things go ‘round here” type of look. His aura was dark and heavy. I try to envision the best case scenario; he’s older; he’s looking at the end of his life, and it was just two pizza boxes. Maybe he has lower-back problems, and he’s barely making it by. I can empathize with that. However, my recycling bin is jammed-packed, and for the last few weeks, at least, it was destroyed, garbage littered my street, and I hope they have the sense to pick mine up since it is full. I’ve ordered new ones. I wanted the big recycling bins that I have seen a few of around with lids and the whole works, but the lady I had called on the number for Environmental Services said the city had phased those out and all we can have are these small open bins.

Upon arriving home from my bike ride from work, my garbage cans were empty and the recycling bin left exactly how it was before: a recipe for more trash littered on my street. This time was different. I was off from classes and the weather was feeling good. I called the City and politely provided the story I have told here to the lady on the other end of line. And so, the Garbage Man was correct. I am in the club, but maybe not his club. She sent one lone man in a city pick-up truck to gather one lonely Recycling Bin amidst a street filled with trash all around. In every yard around him trash was littered; even into the small patch of woods across the street.

I went on with my life for a bit. I looked up some chords from songs I used to play on piano for my ex-girlfriend in college. I am sort of putting together a collage of memorable songs to play and sing when the time comes around. Today it was “Out Of My Mind” by Fastball and next it will be “The Way ‘’ by the same band. Those were songs that were big up North closer to Cincinnati where I mostly grew up, but for her, she was hearing them for the first time, and they made a big impression on her. Or at least the covers I played for her on the pianos in the college practice rooms did. We would sing those songs loudly as we cruised home through country roads down south to see her family. The Deep South is its own Ecosystem when it comes to popular culture. Down here we have different outlets to mainstream culture in different parts of the United States. For instance, the first “Scene or Emo Kid ‘’ I had ever known of back in highschool was in a small town in Alabama. That was before it ever hit the mainstream culture up North that I had known of. We were still into Goth clothes from Spencer’s Gifts and Hot Topic up at Newport on the Levee just over the Purple People Bridge from Cincinnati. And The Grunge Scene was sort of on the Horizon of the Early Millennials. Down South, Kansas City, Missouri is a large Hub for musicians or artists or at least it was back then, and we also have outlets to mainstream culture through Gulf Shores and Panama City Beach which are popular vacation destinations. This is partially why Santa Monica by Everclear was received so enthusiastically by the fans my former bandmate and I of Vestal Vapor & The Vision would receive when we played it. Beach culture is a popular venue of Alabama despite the classic stereo types of BBQ, Football, Church and Country though that is a part of the overall scene.

After rehearsing some Fastball, I decided I would take the opportunity to clean up my street. I took rubber gloves and a garbage bag from under my sink and began cleaning the Anthropocene of strata of trash left by college parties after college parties. I figured I would take the opportunity while the kids were gone so as not to freak any of them out, because I actually cleaned up close to the old rental houses in my view as well as into the woods around here. I can’t really expect them to clean up all the trash others have left, but I figure a clean slate would help the process. There were smashed cheap beer cans that looked like they were thrown there back into the 80’s.

As a result, I am noticing more birds singing louder in the trees. I think the Mocking Bird actually said the daunting and Prophetic words “Cheeseburger” in its song this morning Echoing the fast food culture of trash, providing me with an image it may have seen of someone eating a cheeseburger and throwing the garbage into its home. I have noticed an overall friendlier atmosphere of the surrounding tenants. The psychological effect of a trashy environment is apparent to those of us with Emotional Intelligence. The outside is a reflection of the inside and vice versa. I am clean like the blue seas of Greece inside us and so the trash of drunk rednecks reflects into my ocean.

Later, I would fall asleep one morning reading Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman and I am transported his days upon the American stage. I loafe and am not guilted by loafing and loving. I imagine a beautiful man triumphantly singing a song to himself through the trees of the American Landscape: loving, singing and loafing.

Yesterday, I had an appointment to meet with my Advisor at school. I had to stick around betwixt classes and so I took up my post in the college library near the Nursing and Medicine section. I picked the book of Essays on American Poetry and read essays on W.S. Merwin by Bloom. I am transported into a time of card catalogues and a culture of folks whose lives were spent in the undulating shelves of poetry an literature. It is here that I vow to spend my free time when I am not loafing in the sunshine through nature or reading the Shelley’s in a gazebo during the twilight, on a dark and misty lake.

Last updated March 20, 2024