Garbage

It is early.

WAY too early to be taking pictures to help illustrate a blog. A garbage-recycling receptacle is, at the most, 50-60 feet (about 20 meters, in metric gibberish) from my apartment. It is in perfect view of my sliding patio door.

Within PERFECT view for my cat, who finds it enthralling.

Break a leg.

Its locale is GREAT for me. Its  proximity means I don't have to walk a mile to take out the garbage. These are important considerations when you're partially paralysed and walk about as fast as a glacier.

It DOES provide its share of Mrs. Kravitz-style entertainment and is an eye on social problems in our world.

At its most simplistic, it is a magnet for flies, crows and a myriad of animals that thrive on our waste. It obviously provides a stench that can be tough to take when the wind is blowing a certain way.

MORE interestingly and sadly, it is an eye on us.

There are receptacles for garbage AND for recycling. It doesn't matter which you use; a garbage truck comes along several times a day and unloads the foul contents of both into the same truck.

It all ends up in the same place. Nothing is "recycled."

But of more interest to Sweety (my cat) and I are the human beens that, often in the darkness of night, descend upon the dumpsters. This is a sad thing. Some do this during the day, when they can see better what garbage they are going through.

I hear them.

They are regulars.

They are ostensibly looking for empty bottles they can recycle for cash. I know this NOT because I HAVE been a Mrs. Kravitz, spying on them; I know this because I cannot ignore seeing what's happening in front of my own apartment.

It really IS sad. I have thought before, what if I was reduced to that, to survive? Picking through a dumpster? I just about throw up at the prospect. There is the 1%. There is the 99%. Where does that leave these people?