Trash night reminded me, maybe, what I was thinking of when I wrote “For to the garbage can” as a note-to-self in my phone that, as of last week, was totally confounding to me.

On vacation, my dad was telling me this story about one of his garbage cans.

There were drinks involved.

But I think I woke up thinking about it the next day and wrote down my confusing note, which I’m now pretty sure was supposed to read, “Ode to the garbage can.”

The story itself isn’t anything too dramatic. Just about how one of his garbage cans is falling apart and he feels dumb fixing it while he only needs it to do one job, one day a week, and that includes being a temporary container for garbage.

He’s been taping it. Reapplying stuff to the bottom so squirrels can’t get in and surprise anybody when it gets opened. He knows he should trash the trash can and replace it but there’s a mental block.

And that’s where my brain got hung up (maybe there’s a genetic thing here):

A garbage can’s job is to hold the very thing it will one day become.

One day, the garbage can is garbage.

But every day up to that point in time, its only job is to hold the very thing it will one day become.

Pretty Zen, right?

Makes me think of Oscar the Grouch. I've written about him before, but one of the lines that keeps coming back is this: "It's not garbage; it's a collection of character."

The guy is still grouchy. You don't have to want to be like him. You probably shouldn’t, honestly. BUT, if that line speaks to you, even a little bit - and I think it does - there's a reason why.

Maybe it’s the idea that the thing you’re becoming is already here, you don’t have to wait and you don’t want to rush it.

A miscommunicated note can be trash, or 2 posts worth of exploratory reasoning. A Personal Archive really is a collection of character.