I've eaten garbage for 16 days
and the fungus might be causing a spiritual awakening
The hunter-gatherer in me is awake. My intuition is sharpened. I can sense predators (cop cars, security cameras, curious clerks). I can sense prey and decay… I spot the tracks in the snow… I know my competition…
It is Day 16 of the official experiment, but we’ve been at this for months. It started with a question;
How long could I go, consuming nothing but what others deem unusable? Can I live like a vulture, falling in love with what has been denied?
My life has become a dump. Whether I am home or in the studio, I look around me and see trash, straight up. Our bedside table is a cardboard box with a pillowcase as a tablecloth. My nightstand is a discarded deep-fry basket from McDonald’s, nailed into the wall. The lampshade is a plastic bottle, cut in half, shaded with a red Sharpie. The sheets on our bed were found in a plastic bag, next to the Red Cross bin that had been overflowing with rain, left to grow moldy before the carriers came to take it away. I dyed it pink with avocado pits from the cafe down the street, and when I wake in a pink cloud, I feel like a princess. We wash our bodies with a luxurious liquid almond soap. Sofia spotted a 3L jug in the bin of a beauty store that deemed it unworthy of the shelf. We are clothed in old scrubs and sweatpants and the things people grew out of. We eat by candlelight, the wax saved from a destiny of destitution. Orchids and herbs and dried roses line the windowsill. Fairy lights brighten the corners of our apartment, rescued from the rain.
It has become a game. How far can I go into the denied parts of our society? Into the shadows of the night? It started back in Autumn with the small things — the easy to carry and easy to consume. Bananas, barely bruised. Bread, baked that today but irrelevant tomorrow. Pastries the same. Candy. A bouquet of roses. The sweet things.
But since the experiment has evolved, my primal brain has awoken. I look past the low-hanging fruit and the instant calories. I’m looking for protein and sustenance. Me and my deep freeze and my oven are playing the long game.
The hunter-gatherer in me is awake. My intuition is sharpened. I can sense predators (cop cars, security cameras, curious clerks). I can sense prey and decay (if I was here yesterday, and the salmon is here today, then it hasn’t been left for more than a night. I check the temperature. Like a fridge, like a freezer, indeed.) I spot the tracks in the snow — the garbage truck comes on Mondays. That’s the day of renewal. Get it while you can, for tomorrow it will be gone. I know my hunting spots. I know the other predators around. My tools are becoming more refined, along with my processing skills. We fill as much as our bike bags with carry, cycle it all home and wash it, cut it, freeze it, or dry it out. We preserve the life as long as possible, cutting away as little as we can.
Once, while swirling a pile of perfect strawberries in the sink full of water, I wondered;
Why Mars? Why do we want to go to Mars when we have strawberries here? When we have chickpeas and grass that grows green?
To recall the question now nearly draws tears.
Sometimes the processing takes a full afternoon, sometimes not. Our fridges are always full and bellies, too. Our roommate is often confused about the loads of random items being funneled into the house in the dead of the night. I finally broke the news to her last night about the experiment, and she asked if one night she could join us. Another curious soul seeks to join the mission. Yes, sure. Do you have a bicycle?
Yesterday, I spoke to my mother on the phone. Something has been breaking her down, and she asked me through her tears;
“Will I be poor my whole life?”
I wanted to remind her that she is spiritually rich, that she hasn’t been poor, that she has been generative and abundant and she has gotten most things she has sought… but I responded instead by saying;
“I don’t know, Mum.”
I don't know because I don’t. I have no crystal ball. And if she feels as though she is poor, who am I to tell her she isn’t?
That night, I dreamt of a windstorm. I was sleeping in a part-basement part-barrack as the wind tore through the village. I heard the cries through the night, of people losing their things. Cries of surprise and fear.
The wind was like the Wheel of Fortune. It took riches from some and sent wealth to others. I remember hoping in the middle of the night that I would get 20 dollars from the wind. When the dust had settled, I opened my eyes to piles of money collected in my doorframe, in the gutters, on the floor.
There were rolls and scrolls of hundred-dollar Canadian bills, a currency I haven’t seen with my waking eyes in almost exactly a year. There were 50s and 10s and 5s. Piles and piles, all rolled together.
My mother came to my hovel to check on me, worried I had lost everything, like her and everyone we knew. But when she saw the money, she helped me gather and count it. 60 some thousand dollars. She never asked for a penny. She was only glad that fortune had favoured me. She told me to keep it safe. To use it wisely.
One of the rolls of money was protected inside a plastic bag, inside someone’s glove. I held it in my hands and felt the grief of the glove owner… who had awoken to find their wealth ripped from their hands. Now it was in mine. I had no way of returning it, I could only act responsibly with it.
I immediately bought and ate two whole pizzas and promised myself the diligence would start now.
In my life, I feel the richest I have ever felt. And I have never been with less money.
My childhood friend was so worried about me eating garbage last week that she insisted on sending me money to pay for groceries. I thanked her for her care and generosity but insisted… it is not needed. This is a choice. A privilege. An experiment. A riveting one! One day it will end, and perhaps I will return to the cycle of earning and spending and waxing and waning all again. But first, forty days of this.
In many spiritual and religious traditions, the number forty is significant. It rained for forty days and forty nights in Genesis. Jesus fasted for 40 days. Muhammed spent 40 days fasting before receiving the wisdom of Allah. Moses was on Mount Sinai for the same stretch of time. In Hinduism, the festival of Chaturmas lasts for 40 days. Yogic philosophy says that it takes 40 days to internalize the kriya, to form the habit, and reform your being.
I’ll eat trash for forty days. Mostly because that's the time I have until my final project is due for school. And because I’ve heard it can act as a solid container for transformation and purification. They say that 40 days is long enough to learn perseverance, to resist temptation, to make room for self-examination and reflection. 40 days might be long enough to find some divine connection.
One could say I have already failed in some aspects, having relented to a handful of temptations;
2 small bags of spinach
2 cartons of oat milk
and, on one particularly sunny afternoon;
2 cans of non-alcoholic beer.
1 bar of dark chocolate
1 bottle of fancy kombucha (an offering to my dear friend)
Maybe it’s the excess fungus that has permeated the cells of the fruits that I feed off of, but I feel something deep shifting in me. A new vision, a new spark. My senses are alive, my belly rests. My hair looks really fucking good lately?!?! (thank you, smoked salmon?). I feel resourceful, my eyes are open, and there’s a kind of discipline that has developed into a new freedom I’ve never felt.
My parents and their generation and yours and all of us were sold a very specific dream. If we work hard, we will be rewarded. I’m seeing that dream crumble around the people I love and who have raised me and worked so hard their whole lives to make something, to give us something, to feel something worth feeling, in the end. So, what then? If the American dream is a farce? If we are just as likely to work hard and win as we are to work hard and lose? What counts as either? Where can we retrieve our autonomy? What is that thing we’re seeking for retirement? What will we be when we are not poor?
I don’t have the answers, but the questions are getting clearer each day.
The List! - a segment for sensory exploration
seeing:
a new friend, by candlelight, witnessing her beauty and power
the coming together of my sculpture …
this beautiful, huge Norwegian Forest cat
this sweet warehouse that we danced and slept walked in, until 6am…
the history of ownership of the book I am reading, penned on the first page. I picked it up in a hostel; A Little Life.
feeling
brain freeze from jumping into the spring ocean, waves lapping up in my ears, freezing my skull
like one of god’s little sponges, so full of tears, weeping every time some hand squeezes me into action
an overwhelming relief and grief, arising from reconnecting with an old friend
the first pangs of really missing home and missing here at the same time. the journey is coming to an end.
hearing
a blaring fire alarm, waking me in the night…
hard drive - Cassandra Jenkins
laughter on the other end of a phone call…
smelling
some weird garlicky smell attached to the styrofoam i’m using for my sculpture
eucalyptus cream, spread on sore muscles
tasting
somehow I feel we covered that!
Bicycle Boys. Send me your lists! I love to read them and experience the senses of your world
Part of this experiment is attending school, and you can imagine the trash doesn’t stop at my house. My final project for my time here in Norway is a life-sized sculpture of a garbage can, made from only found and waste materials. It will be exhibited so that all can experience the sensory joys of finding things in garbage bins. I’m making a short film documenting the entire process, which I will share here, in a few weeks. Thanks so much for following along and supporting this little newsletter. I appreciate everyone here so much.
Songs you heard in the Voiceover:
Intro: Dreams - The Cranberries
Transition: Pollen - K.Takahashi
Outro: Hard Drive - Cassandra Jenkins
Thank you all so much for your support — to Bicycle Boys far and wide.
Another absolute delight (and surprise) from an incredibly creative and observant writer.