What trash?
My very first apartment had a "trash corner"

I kept meaning to buy a trash can but... for the living room we ended up just using a spot where two desks pushed together with the corner of the walls to form a box - we just tossed shit there for years.

I always insisted I would clean it out that weekend and put a proper trash can in ... but honestly I really enjoyed banking shots off the walls or just throwing things blindly over my shoulder and knowing they ended up in their "proper" place.

Sometimes I'd make a half hearted attempt to lessen the density of the pile in there - but basically I just let it naturally biodegrade and enjoyed the faint heat it gave off as it composted.

4 years later we moved out, took the desks away - and a near two meter tall compacted sculpture of papers, wrappers, and god knows what else stood on it's own in all it's glory in the corner.

It was kinda pretty. Vivid shiny colors of candy and crisps consumerism mixed with the whites and comforting pastels of the meaningless mailings and bureaucratic paperwork that'd been duefully tossed where they belonged over the years. Glued together with whatever liquids had been left in paper cups, the grease of the working man and every bit of random whatsit that I'd been just too damn lazy to get up and walk over to the trashcan in the kitchen it was really surprisingly stable and solid.

It's quite possible we could have moved it like one big piece of furniture if we were feeling adventurous and weren't worried that if we grabbed it, it would grab back - but I just decided I'd leave it there for the landlord to deal with (the last year had seen a change in management and the new ones deserved a bit of trashing, so to speak =)) I figured losing the cleaning deposit a fair loss for not being bothered.

Found out a few days later that my roommate was more enamored with the deposit than I was (she hadn't even paid it in the first place!) but equally unwilling to deal with the corner... so she asked her little brother to stop by and "tidy" up the place before the landlord got to see it but after we were long gone... her brother apparently spent an entire Saturday undoing the damage - some ridiculous number of bags of trash removed, then more time on hand and knee with full on scrubbing to fix up the carpet and walls. When I heard (and if I hadn't been the one to get the cleaning deposit out of the mail I'm pretty sure I'd never *have* heard word one about his part in any of it) - I spent the returned deposit on getting him a new big fancy computer monitor for his bday (I figured he had earned it =))

All in all - they've never let me live it down - though recently we all moved in together again so I guess they don't hold it against me. much.

I still remember it shining in the afternoon sun, glinting, rustling, calling to me to just to light one match... I can only imagine the colors of flame that unnatural collection of compacted grease, paper and whatnot would have produced...

It's a good image though =)
( Allisade would love to hear from you, Thu 13 Nov 2008, 20:13, Reply)