Late morning, and I'm standing on 31st street, sun warming my face and blinding me as I exhale a luxuriant cloud of French tobacco. The cigarettes are Galouises, in case you're curious. I order them online from Switzerland.

About 10 feet away is a pile of trash consisting of a roll of mesh wire, several broken sheets of plywood and a couple plastic barrels, from which seep a dark-colored liquid. On the whole an exemplary garbage heap, and I discover in myself a wish to take a photo for posting here. I don't have my digital camera however. No way to interact with the trash pile, so sad.

A moment later, I wonder why I want this trash pile in my life, I mean beyond the consideration I'm giving it during this cigarette break. Why do I want to spread the gospel of the garbage? There are people out there blogging trash. I like these pictures and others like them, which find beauty in the everyday, even in refuse and other byproducts of civilization. But I'm not sure where they fit into my themes.

On a first brainstorm, I'd say my themes include bicycles, local food, amphibians, esoterica, the country, apocalypse, Bildungsroman tales, the reversion of civilization to nature, improvisation, advertising, the onset of digital media (a huge event in human storytelling) and now, twins & the double (more on that in some later post). These are what I dream about, gravitate to, collect and invest energy in.

Wow, fun. Everyone should do that.

Now, to get to the point, does this morning's trash pile possibly fit with my themes? Having written and thought about the pile now for like twenty minutes, I've decided it actually does. In fact, it obviously does and I now feel stupid for belaboring the point. Talking about trash means talking about sustainability (for me, at least), a rubric that runs through many of my interests.

To take a few examples: I ride my bike because its fun, but I'm interested in my bike insofar as it's a sustainable answer to the fuel and transportation addictions that are today causing wars and creating pollution. Local food tastes better, but I'm interested in it insofar as it promotes regional diversity, which sustains life. Improvisation is something I try to practice every minute of every day, and it’s key to my love of music and comedy; it keeps soul-numbing repetition at bay; it's sustenance of the mind.

When we scrutinize refuse, tree-huggers are stepping through the looking glass. Trash piles are the inverse negative images of bicycles. The more we use the latter, the more the former will shrink, (though the former will always be with us). The world produces more waste than ever now, and the human family is growing in size. The more of us there are, the more trash, runoff, garbage, debris, detritus, refuse, junk and all around byproduct there will be. The byproduct is not going away, and it's something we're going to have to look at, consider, fix, or else poison our nest and die.

But this is all quite obvious, isn't it? There's so much more to say about waste, for instance about the increasing duplication of trash resulting from the peculiar duplicate nature of consumer products. But it'll have to wait, as I've got a life and a job that need tending.

The great trash heap has spoken!