the ever-flowing materialization of the world

how is it possible for one person to exist here? it requires endless material, large and small, and every day is a struggle to get through it all! one brings in food and is left with packaging, endless amounts of it, to be sorted and discarded and at best sent off for reprocessing. a pile here of one sort, a pile there of another, to be lugged down stairs and placed in large containers, often already overflowing and poorly sorted.

what else comes in? paper, endless paper, and while that may be reprocessed in toto (a sudden thought of ancestors who had not yet invented plastic), so much of it must be saved, and sorted, and placed in different containers hopefully to be found again when required. a momentary lapse and this process falls far behind, and then there are containers on containers of unsorted or "might need" piling up on every surface, or if lucky shoved into large closet or spare room.

their clothes are nearly as disposable, a year or two and they become unwearable, and as yet cannot be reprocessed, though even recent ancestors would remodel or make rugs of them. but of course this was before they invented plastic. (the shiny surface of the polyester shirt-blend, so lustrous when new, so soon mottled and covered with small unremovable balls of material...)

one is noticing a plastic theme here! and with it one sees one's plastic pens, discardable, one's plastic keyboard, many times replaced due to spills and such, plastic drinking cups that soon become scratched, plastic soapdishes, plastic fans that wear out, etc etc.

but why not buy "quality"? some rich person says, wandering by. my dear sir! quality, alas, COSTS MUCH MORE. the things our ancestors took for granted are now marketed only to the rich, and in an ever-increasing spiral of costliness. drinking item made of glass or ceramic? somewhat more. made of "quality" glass? a lot more. made of "quality" glass with a famous name on it (why, oh why)? you might as well give up.

luckily i was sent to dwell in nigh-on poverty, for down here you see what is real and how it costs us. i must not only purchase, but personally deal with, store and discard all material that comes through, and i see the overflowing containers out back, and smell my neighbors' cooking, and run into them on the stairs as they move their tons of material in and out. (though note that one can acquire many useful items during this process - a privilege unavailable to the rich!)

somebody is yawning and saying, but hasn't this been addressed before? are you rich, by any chance, sir? or perhaps you just live as if you were, with cheap versions of everything and "plastic" of the very best sort, and as if an endless universe in which to discard it all.

it all comes around
in the end
novelty is destruction's best friend
while this may sound puerile
and heavy and dull
and maybe even "religious"
nevertheless, it is