just picking up trash (new blog)

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Tuesday, April 13, 2010

(New blog, take two. My first title didn't work for me. This works better.)

So how does one gracefully start a blog? I guess the answer is that you don't always start it gracefully. You just do it.

Okay. In the beginning ... that line's already been taken.

Well, in the beginning, which in this case is last week, I went to Ocean Beach (in San Francisco) for the first time in awhile. The amount of trash was disturbing. I resolved to come back with bags and do something to clean up some of it.

For a change I kept my resolution. The next day, even. And the day after, and the day after that, and on to Sunday morning, in the rain.

And realized that the bag of trash I've committed to picking up most days is only going to go so far. Displacing this small amount of trash to a landfill and hoping it stays in place isn't a bad thing but something more is definitely needed, something like colllectively re-learning to not produce the waste in the first place.

As is glaring obvious, to live waste-free in this culture as it's currently organized is like, well, like swimming upstream. Although I don't exactly have a history of taking to change easily, the time I spend everyday (almost) picking up pieces of plastic which would otherwise be mistaken for food by a wild animal keeps it real. Especially since I have to leave so much on the beach, and I know that the trash on the beach is such a small part of what's out there, and I also see around me life, and the evidence other life, that could get hurt by eating this stuff, and it hurts me.

Abstract isn't such a strong motivator. Actuality is more of one.

Everyone has different motivators for making the changes that we need to make, as a culture, and different entry points. This, my first ever blog, will be the story of mine.

This blog will be about picking up trash on the beach, but it won't. It will be about the details of this particular piece of earth as I learn more about it; the temperature of the air, the colors of the water, and above all, the life that I observe and piece together information about from shells and birds and fisherfolk and seaweed and also websites and books. And the trash, too; how what I'm collecting affects this life. And about my attempts to live without creating more trash.

Not everything in each post, of course, but unfolding, piece by piece, like the trash I pick up.

I'm a little afraid that I'll start this and drop it. But I can't. I am responsible to too many creatures, wild ones, to do this. So expect posts a couple times a week, at least. And find your motivator and your path to a more sustainable culture.