Ta(l)king out the Trash

Once upon a time, (probably in my first year of MA in Windsor, Canada) I was exasperated: at the level of writing of an assignment I was marking and I told my co-TA "She (student) has written rubbish all over!"

Next, my co-TA was almost rolling on the floor laughing...............on my vocabulary. Apparently and understandably, the word "rubbish" was archaic and very British, and pointed to my colonial heritage which even though one possesses, one is not supposed to show; the inheritance of such outdated and misplaced vocabulary should be trashed out.

Even though I knew the word "trash" this is how I remembered to use it.

Of course, when I say the above sentence, I mean that this is how the word "trash" came upon my life with enormous significance. Trash took up a significant chunk of my arguments with some of my roommates, with however, little substantive consequence on the ritual of taking out the trash. It was me who always had to do it; and then thrash out indirectly to my husband at how insensitive and useless rest of the world is.

(Whoever takes out the trash everyday will sympathize with me and whoever just fills in the trash and never/seldom takes it out will feel an increasing sense of pleasure for belonging to the other camp)

But that is not the point. The point is that, many times when I take out the trash I cannot help but remember (very boringly and very predictably) of that one Sociology experiment where researchers went through trash of their targeted houses to see who used condom and who didn't (I think it was the tea room experiment). Bypassing the Ethics people, the researchers were following people to see who was gay, who was closeted gay and who used condom when having sex with their wife.

So it turns out that trash is not trashy after all. It does have its use, isn't it?

Of course, the use is not limited to only experiment! All of us (us=middle class Bengali children growing up in the late 80 and 90s) have made (or attempted to make) something decorative with trash. Taj Mahal from homeopathy bottles or injection syringes, wall hanging from own or others' rejected bangles, handmade greeting cards with pencil shavings off the sharpener......the list can only grow and make me nostalgic....

Which again is told to be trash; the nostalgia......it does no good except make you hate everything you are doing at the moment.

And when you hate the moment, you think you are leading a trashy life. This is what I think though, sans the effect of nostalgia. When moments slip away from your fingers, it is hard to love them, isn't it?

And even though ideas (and dreams) stay in your head, bringing them on to your fingertips can make you being trashed out to others. Yes, even though GIGO (Garbage in and Garbage Out) remains the popular rule according to which the basic programming as well as the universe is supposed to be bound together, sometimes Garbage Out becomes the bottomline irrespective of what is inside, garbage or not.

Like this entry.

The resultant angst of posting entries like this can only give more reasons to pick on the roommate who never takes out the trash and/or to regret ruefully on how one could bypass the ethics people, get an unthinkable work done and get a paper published.

Among all the trash that comes out of AJS, ASR, Social Forces and Social Problems, probably the above one could be true to its roots; to say it in the outdated Herbert Spencer way.....it would be true to its organic roots, compost trash being one of its significant components.