Rock Bottom

I went through a friend's trash yesterday.

Sunday, was a hot and humid one here in Tucson. Given that it was only slightly less miserable than segments of Hell itself, and given my knack for being perpetually unlucky, it was also completely natural that the last day of July just so happened to coincide with the expiration of many a lease here in the Old Pueblo. Moving from place to place is its own hell. The weather was more than accommodating.

True to form, one particularly good friend needed help schlepping her stuff from point A to B, so my wife and I readily helped her with the move. On the off chance my friend sees this post: my quibble is not with the request for help, but with Mother Nature for being a royal bitch on the lone instance I needed to exert physical effort on a Sunday.

Turns out, we got most of the heavy lifting done in the early morning. While three flights of stairs were less than an optimal condition for moving things like a couch, bed, and bookshelves, we managed to finagle the reluctant items down the stairwell, and into/onto my truck for the quick jaunt across town.

With the heavy items out of the way, we helped our friend haul various boxcars of trash to the dumpsters behind her apartment complex. The stretch of blacktop between the apartment and the dumpster was only twenty yards long. But ray after humid ray of sunshine gradually began to wear down our resolve. Soon, we were indiscriminately hauling items that were certifiably NOT trash to the bins, simply because we were too tired to actually go through the items to see whether they were salvageable or not.

In some ways, I relished the roll of trash man. I took a visceral satisfaction at being able to chunk the items into the bin after carrying them in the heat of the day across the parking lot. I felt a bit like Bing Crosby in "Road to Morocco," clawing along the sands of the Sahara Desert, yearning for a drip of moisture from the heavens. But of the actual, disposal process itself, there was nothing particularly insightful about it. The thud of the items against the hollow trash bin was an eminently satisfying conclusion to a walk in Tucson's humid, monsoon climes.

But, on one occasion, as I hurled a J Crew bag at the very back of the massive dumpster, I heard a distinct, metallic clang when the bag hit the wall of the bin. As a rainfall of beans fell out of the bag, along with various other kitchen items, I saw a lone silver bowl glinting in the sun.

My mind immediately wandered to the many hours I've spent making salsa in our own kitchen. I thought about the smell of cilantro, and jalapeños that fill the apartment while we prepare our secret recipe. And I thought about the times I wished I had had a massive, metal mixing bowl in which to pour out the salsa purée as I prepared the other ingredients.

There, winking in the sun, was exactly the bowl I needed - if only I would dumpster dive to retrieve it.

Having spent some time in Boston, I can say with a bit of authority that dumpster diving is less a science and more an art. There are, quite literally, tons of dumpster lining Summer Street in Boston's Financial District. And on several occsions I had the opportunity to witness the homeless and mentally distressed prospecting in the dumpster bins of local businesses. Call it America's very own iteration of the video game "Fallout New Vegas."

In my arrogance, I had always assumed "these people" had somehow hit rock bottom. Whether by circumstance, or by life choices, these individuals had simply put themselves in the position of having to dive into dumpsters in hopes of finding a treasure. I assumed that the dumpsters of Summer Street, Boston, Mass., were the cemeteries where hopes and dreams came to rest, after having died long ago.

So, naturally, it was with a bit of hesitation that I scaled the wall of the trash bin to retrive my friend's junk, and my own treasure. A bit of Palmolive would have the bowl right back into culinary order. And I could always deny its pedigree. After all, the bowl could very well be an $80 mixing bowl from Williams-Sonoma, which isn't beyond the pale of plausibility given that my friend is a good Yalie.

Still, as I climbed out of the bin, I couldn't help but wonder, based upon my own biases, whether this was what rock bottom was like. Had my life been reduced to dumpster diving? With a full two weeks before students loan disbursement, perhaps.

Surprisingly, rock bottom really wasn't all that bad.