Sunday, 20 January 2002 | I like trash

Today Martin and I went to a recycling center, to get rid of the stuff that isn't regularly picked up at the house, to get rid of the stuff that's been accumulating for months: magazines, newspapers, and boxes. Today Martin and I went to a recycling center and possibly brought more home than we left there.

After discovering a magazine bin that had a top layer of publications from the late '50s and early '60s, we began sifting through, collecting, and stacking. Unnatural colors, perky fashion, gelled male hair and flipped-up ends. Jeans: $2.98. "New" models of cars and refrigerators, long-retired fonts and lingo. Cigarette and medicine ads with no warnings or listed ingredients. In-depth articles about "red" China, the desegregation of U.S. schools, how the women of Rio "flower" early, and Vietnam. Covers with an alive Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy, Winston Churchill.

I'm guessing these magazines were tossed out with the death of their owner, the person who browsed through them when they were brand new. (Which puts a new mortality angle on my own pack-rat tendencies... Will someone throw these out again when I die? I hope it doesn't come to that.)

So, while everyone else walked away from the bins empty-handed, we headed back to the car with our arms full. I plan to read the articles and make tape/CD covers from the ads, so, no, it isn't really clutter.