Dancing
Through The Trash
I was
restless with the novelty of being in Hawaii for the first time; I had left
Minnesota in a raging blizzard, with windchills hovering around 40 below, and
just couldn't get used to the warmth, the humidity, the flowers. I was staying
with friends along Oahu's north shore, and got up around 6am to go outside and
just get more of the place into me. They were renting a house in a residential
area on a point protruding into the ocean. Swells broke on the rocks
surrounding their place with an angry "cahRunch" and the offshore
winds brought the spray and the smell of the sea to my frozen-closed sinuses.
It was great.
I loved it. I couldn't sleep.
Walking along
the traffic-less street, breathing and feeling smug about myself, I drifted
into the mindless mode of looking at houses, cars, trees, the wiring from
utility poles, the roofs. Not many chimneys there.
The noise of
a garbage truck woke me from my wispy musings, and I watched two men, both in
early adulthood, pick up the cans and empty them into the truck.
These guys
did not act like guys who've been yarding garbage since before the Fall. They
did not have the grunt and shuffle blues in their faces; they did not walk
purposefully and efficiently, anticipating hours of what I'd expect was
drudgery. These guys didn't walk-I think that's what I noticed first-they
danced. They leapt between the cans, the hedges, the driveways, the wild
bougainvillea, like an audition for ABT. One guy would arc a can to the other
who, almost like a trapeze artist, would grab it and swing it into the truck.
Then, in an almost unbroken move, he'd swing it back to the first, who'd drop
it and then pirouette to the next can or the truck, (these guys would switch
off, depending on some nonverbal recognition of who was closest to the next
can, or whether the truck needed to be moved up the street, or whether some
lawn obstacle made movement easier for one). It was graceful, it appeared
effortless, it seemed like a game. They were having, well, fun. I figured they
were surfers; an easy way to make pretty good money, get some training exercise
to keep in shape, be done by 9 am to spend the day on the water. Dancing with
the cans kept up their balance; it turned, what for many would be just a job,
into something personally valuable.
I did not
interrupt them to ask why they had to be so unusual, why they couldn't just
carry the cans the way everyone is supposed to. Maybe they weren't surfers-it
is only I who needed to rationalize their behavior. What if they were just
guys, not doing it for training? What if they just felt better doing it with
some style? Wait: what if they got paid by the route, not by the can, and if
they could get it done sooner, they'd make more money per hour spent, I
rationalized again. Even I might try to move more quickly in order to get it
done faster (and make more money). But what if they weren't doing it for the
money? What if they were just doing it for the fun?
I've got to
take the garbage to the dump today, and I'll have difficulty keeping their
game-like delight in my mind, much less in my own graceless grunts as I try to
pick up the overstuffed cans and set them in the back of the truck.
May I have
the wisdom to see the delight in this task as freely as they offered it to me.