Hi!
Twice now this year I’ve posted pictures of books Jake and I are giving away, and invited friends and acquaintances to claim them. It’s fun to know where a book will go for its next life. I deliver them by foot or by car to people in the area and say hi from a distance while I’m there, if possible. It’s a good motivation for leaving the apartment, and I’m hoping that it proves to be a foolproof plan for feeling social and busy throughout the winter.
Memories triggered by trash
Last weekend, I delivered a book to a friend. He lives just a 10 minute walk from my apartment, so I headed out on foot. In order to nurture myself through the could walk, I brought along a hot cup of black tea. I took relatively empty back streets so that I could leave my mask hanging around my neck most of the time for uninhibited sips.
I walked with my head down, allowing my hatted head to block the cold air from my face. The pavement moved past my black boots like a movie reel, sometimes carrying little bits of garbage and debris — disposable gloves, random piles of dirt, lost receipts. At one point, I passed a small population of discarded hot sauce packets from Taco Bell. They were all Medium heat, with the same orange packaging and each with a stupid saying. None of them were open.
Passing by these packets gave me the tiniest flashback to being 14 or 15. Do not ask me why. I didn’t see it coming. I don’t understand the mechanics of this flashback, nor the associations, just that it was as intense and tangible as the memories sometimes carried by scent. Only there was no smell, just Taco Bell medium hot sauce packets, jettisoned from some car window or the hand of another biped on foot.
I’ve contemplated the significance of this hot sauce garbage over the last week, and here is where I stand with it.
As my 31-year-old self, I am full of many worries, many “what ifs,” “should haves,” and “my bads.” It feels like I am always in a state of thoughtfulness, trying to be conscientious of my surroundings and my influence on a space. I see a bunch of hot sauce packets on the ground through jaded lenses. Such a sight might trigger thoughts like: “Ugh, look at all this trash;” “All neighborhoods are unwelcoming and covered with trash;” “These hot sauce packets aren’t even funny they’re just a marketing ploy.”
I’m not actively thinking these things, nor spiraling out of control in distress from seeing some fast food debris on the sidewalk. But at this point in life I’m not good at seeing a thing without also consciously or subconsciously wondering about its connection to everything else. I think this is because I’ve committed myself to a life of observation. I rarely think to turn it off for a mindless gambol.
Whereas, at age 14 or 15, although there was plenty of trash on the streets, it just felt like part of the adventure, not part of my responsibilities.
One of my favorite things to do at that time was to walk around with one or more friends and find new angles of the world that I hadn’t been able to spot from the seat of my mom or dad’s car. Perhaps guided by cliché punk band photo shoot concepts, my friends and I would bring our cameras and pose in bus stops or with shopping carts, trying to look like we had been caught living our cool, apathetic lives in the city. We looked everywhere for places to pose. We wanted to edit ourselves into the frame, to find how we would mesh with these settings that were now ours to explore.
I was reminded more of this phase when I went to sort a box of photos in the attic this week. There were glossy doubles of almost every popular subject: someone in an ugly hat at the supermarket; a group of girls standing on a fountain with their hips cocked dramatically to the side; an attempt at art via multiple feet in flip flops and sneakers pointed in the same direction on a curb; an older friend getting into her car in a giant parking lot with her lanyard and keys held victoriously high above her head.
We also had a habit of finding objects on the ground and seeing some meaning or irony in them that made them feel photo worthy. Had I been on this walk with friends 16 years ago, we might have picked up one of the hot sauce packets and pretended to kiss it for an up close picture of our crazy, kooky lives.
So that's what it was like for me, for one fifth of a second, when I walked by the Taco Bell medium hot sauce mass grave. The moment was too brief to have taken actual verbal shape, but if I could put it into words now, it would be something like: “Lol, omg that’s so random, why would someone leave all of their hot sauce packets here? *Picks one up.* ‘Of all those sauce packets, why me why now?’ LOL What does that even mean? Here, take a picture of me.”
It was a fun and liberating dive into the nonchalance and absentmindedness of being a young teen. May we all see our inner 14-year-old selves again soon.
Fortune cookie
Twenty minutes feels like something, although it is not.
Jake is humming a beautiful performance of “Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?” and heating up leftovers from yesterday, which means it’s time to go.
Thanks for reading, my friends,
xo
Katya
Love Jake's song choice.