The Curse of the Dump
I wince at the thought of having to brave the ever-present gloom
that reigns there. The Dump is a strange and repulsive place, where people tend
to bury the human spirit along with their refuse.
From the main road, the Dump looked like a prison. The perimeter
was surrounded by an eight-foot chain-link with barbed-wire stretched tightly
around the top of it. As I followed the slow procession of vehicles through the
front gate, I noticed a man peeking through the blinds of a dirty office
building. The building's tan exterior was peeling away, probably as a result of
prolonged exposure to the toxic environment. Up on a hill overshadowing the
recycling bins, there was another unsightly tan building. This one was
twenty-five feet tall and draped with rusty sheet-metal. Trucks full of old
furniture, brush, and tree limbs were unloaded inside of this building, for it
contained the largest crushing machine on the premises. When activated, it made
torturous scraping noises accompanied by splintering crackles. The old building
looked like it had been rammed into at least a hundred times, and if it
happened one more time, it would collapse taking every thing in it straight to
hell.
The stench was unbearable. I pulled my shirt up over my nose to
try and filter the bitter air. Moments later, I saw a rat fumbling around with
a Mac Donald's bag. Weeds bordering the fence were littered with plastic
wrappers, styrofoam cups, and other non-biodegradable materials. Polluted water
that was seeping out of the dumpsters had formed stagnate puddles that were
infested with thousands of tiny spasmodic worms. I wondered how that anyone
could work in this foul environment and remain healthy, either physically or
mentally.
People at the Dump all had the same blank expression on their
faces, void of any emotion. They came in like robots, emptied their trash, and
sped away as fast as possible without running someone over. A man with his
pants not completely pulled up was crawling through a dumpster full of old
washers and dryers. At one point he surfaced, paced back and forth furiously,
and then dove back in. No one seemed to care, or even notice for that matter. A
young man at the next bin over was throwing away black plastic bags full of
roofing shingles. The reason I knew this is because one of the bags ripped open
while he was hurling it into the dumpster. And the shingles caught my attention
after just reading a sign that said, Absolutely no contractor or construction
debris. Within minutes, a man wearing a coffee stained T-shirt and a hat
bearing the Dump's company logo approached the young offender. He said,
"Son, whatcha got in them bags?" The young man replied, "Just
some old garbage." Knowing that the young man was lying, the employee with
a sinister yellow grin said, "Them bags look awful heavy son. Are you sure
you don't have any body parts in there?" I decided to leave the two men
alone; after all, my task was finished.
In conclusion, the Dump is an eerie and malodorous place, where we
tend to bury our spirit--our very humanity, along with our refuse. The Dump is
a metaphor for death, a graveyard laden with the excess of society. The
repulsive nature of the dump reminds us that one day we too will decompose and
be recycled back into nature. Because we find this distasteful, we bury our
true feelings behind a robotic nature. And after finally realizing that the
curse of the Dump is creeping upon us, we run away to escape its infectious
melancholy.
by kind permission
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