Plastic Lies

We were open during the long holiday weekend, but I did not expect much action on Friday or Saturday. Most of the citizens would be be enjoying an extended Thanksgiving holiday. They were not thinking about the RDF. They would either stay in their homes picking on leftovers or would join the throngs on the highways and byways to get to the mall or wherever.

Here at the RDF it was like a morgue. The regulars choose to take this post-Thanksgiving holiday in lieu of veterans day, so I had only a skeleton staff.
As I made my early morning rounds, there was an eery silence, the scent of decay was heavy in the pre-dawn miasma, and the muffled voices of ghosts seemed to whisper from the giant piles of recycled leaves and earth.

It put me in a philosophic frame of mind.

I have been thinking about wood lately. This is not such an odd topic for thoughtful consideration by someone who works at (and, if I may add, Manages) a dump. If you think about it, 99% of trash arrives here in several basic forms: Wood, Metal, paper, plastic and garbage.
Wood waste is the most plentiful. Broken wooden furniture and toys, brush and tree limbs, stumps, falling down fences, odd pieces of lumber, construction debris - these occupy most of our landfill dumpsters. Next most voluminous is paper products - newspaper, cardboard containers, boxboard, office paper, magazines. By the way, these are also wood derivative products. So I get to see wood in many forms, and here is the thing about wood: Wood is a metaphor for Truth.

There are many shades and grains and shapes of Truth. You can round the edges of it, and pound nails through it. You can build a house with it or build a weapon of war . You can stain it, cover it with paint or bury it. You can bend it into hoops and even burn it. Perhaps the Ultimate and final Truth is in the ashes. But maybe ". . . Sometimes, it's just a piece of wood," as Freud might have said.