Window, a freewrite
I've been culling my house of forty years of stuff. The obvious garbage is either piled up, bagged up or gone, and now I am onto Step Two of my unproven method for culling a house of forty years of stuff - I'm giving Another Man's Treasure away. Mixed in with my somewhat-valuables is a lot of bonafide memorabilia. And that's where time stands still, a window is opened, and off to back then I go. Today it was an old never-once-used gift that cast the spell.
Table umbrellas grace nearly every suburban yard in the center of a patio table, but mine languished in the garage for twenty years, collecting lint dust from the dryer. It was a practical gift, one that would have given me great pleasure, if only I had had a table.
I remember feeling put out about this gift. And about the charcoal grill. And the tennis rackets. They all required a large task, which was to be done by me, in order for all of us to enjoy them. These gifts got annoying to tell the truth, but today I am trying to see them differently, through a different frame, a newly-opened window. I'm thinking the table would have been nice.
This is my entry to @mariannewest's freewrite challenge https://steempeak.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-577-5-minute-freewrite-monday-prompt-window
I'm hoping to work on this a lot more for @jayna's Monday challenge https://steempeak.com/fiction/@jayna/micro-fictioncontestresultsandnewpromptwindow-2tqv2g6ygq
The image is mine of his tennis racket, because I couldn't remember which of the many was supposed to be mine.
Thank you for reading.
All these gifts required a large task, which was to be done by me, in order for all of us to enjoy them.
I hear you!!!
I'm a curmudgeon, but those who know me know I mean it when I say PLEASE, no gifts. Your voice on the phone, your face to face presence, is the best present you can give. On the rare occasion I set foot in a store, I'm amazed and horrified at the vast quantity of useless stuff for sale, for people to give as token gifts, or to clutter their own homes with. It's obscene. It's free enterprise and capitalism, yes, and Madison Avenue marketing at its worst. Look at Shaker homes and pioneer sod huts on the prairie and think about Climate Change and the local landfill and all the ways we contribute-- we love to blame Big Corporations for pollution, but every one of us is that single grain of rice the emperor in Disney's Mulan so memorably describes:
"A single grain of rice can tip the scale. One man may be the difference between victory and defeat."
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/39e1747c-973b-4828-a2ad-cd50d2472b4e#rkd23T9bT4.copy
Don't ever go to Las Vegas then. That there has to be the most horrifyingly wasteful place in the universe. I do not understand the allure, and hope I never have to go there again.
I'm on a anti-war binge. If we want to stop climate change, stop the bombing. This would be an easy fix for a great many problems, many large and greedy corporations would crumble, and the little people could stop feeling guilty for forgetting to say "no straw please."
But I do everything I can to reduce my garbage and my plastic use. I make my own yogurt, for instance, mostly to avoid those huge plastic containers it comes in, and I buy very very little take out or processed food, which even so are still my largest uses of plastic.
I love the image of a single grain of rice tipping the scale. I'll have to carry that idea with me. Thanks
I carry the grain of rice image - and I carry my own glass take-home container for leftovers when we go to our favorite Mandarin Spice restaurant. (Or anywhere.) I'm thinking I should stash some in the car but it's already full of re-usable cloth grocery bags and cardboard boxes. Still. I applaud your home-made yogurt. So many foods come packaged in plastic, and it reminds me how horrified my dad was in 1979 when he saw Europeans buy loaves of bread, carry them out to the car without so much as a paper wrapper, and toss it into the back seat - with a dog on board! We are far too diligent about germs. I get the risk of e-coli and salmonella, but Lysol kills immune systems, not just germs, and plastic wrap kills wildlife. I want the world to start living a little more like ecovillagers do, but without their total ban on all things plastic, like pet crates and dishes. (Not parting with my melamine.)
Carol I just saw this comment. Erg! so hard to keep track of everything around here.
In NYS, food establishments are not allowed to put their food into a customer's packaging. Isn't that horrid? It's just one of the great many laws intended to help us but does harm instead, and was born of the hyper-germ-phobic nonsense.
When I do buy take out food, which is rare, I ask them to wrap it in deli paper instead of those plastic containers whenever it's possible. I cook almost everything we eat. I haven't figured out how to avoid the plastic containers that fruit often comes in. And despite all my efforts, I still have a full bin of plastic to recycle every month. I know people who have two bins every week! Beverages seem to be the biggest culprit, and why anyone drinks stuff like diet soda baffles me. Disgusting!
Those laws. OMG.
Everyone should have to drive their trash to the landfill at least once, to see what it looks like, that pile of containers, boxes, plastics, a mountain of garbage, and that's the recycle pile. The colossal metal dumspters are full of fixable furniture, bicycles, and things that could be re-purposed, all mixed in with filth. Every citizen should have to see a landfill up close - and tour a meat packing plant - and see what factories are dumping into rivers. Ignorance is bliss. And I, too, despite my efforts to minimize my "Carbon Footprint," have piles of trash and recyclables. Once every six to eight weeks I drive it to the landfill. Ugh. Plastic water bottles just blow my mind. Most aren't recycled. The lids don't recycle. It's disgusting. Must end this rant now.
Isn't it amazing how much stuff we have collected after all of those years? That was a great way to use the prompt. : )
Thank you! It's stopping for the memories that takes time going through it all. But I'm getting there.