My Stuff

In response to

Dustman by Michael Rosen

I said to the dustman, 'You're taking my stuff.'

'Yep,' he said.

I said, 'Everything in this bin matters.'

He said, 'C'mon pal, we're on a tight turnaround here.'

I said, 'You're taking my stuff.'

He called to his mates, 'We've got one here.'

I said, 'That's my past you're taking.'

He said, 'Uh-huh.'

I said, 'I haven't got any other past. I can't go out and

buy someone else's past and pretend it's mine. All

the stuff in here happened to me.'

He said, 'Am I taking it or not?'

I said, 'Why are you asking me? This is all much

bigger than a yes-no thing. It's about identity. And

culture.'

'And bins,' he said.

'We are what we throw away,' I said, 'and you're

a cog in a machine that is cutting us down to

size. The machine doesn't want us to know who

we are. And the way it's doing this is to cut us

off from our pasts. It's not your fault,' I said, 'you

have to earn a living, but you've become a tool

in their hands.'

He said, 'I'll just do next door's. If you change your mind

in the meantime, I'll come back and get yours.'

I love this poem, the noises of the morning, the emotional, social and moral dilemmas of a week day. The pragmatism of having a system to shed the stuff of human endeavour. The conversations that randomly happen in the street between two strangers. The way that a fleeting relationship builds, forms and then disintegrates. It’s comforting. We need this stuff to keep us present. Solid ground to walk on when there is a sea of turmoil. Waking up to the same scene day in day out matters because in all the confusion we know that what we see is true even if it isn’t what we want. Without this truth we would stumble and fall, disappearing into an unstructured space, swirling with the cacophony of everything, bashing into us and sending us spinning. I like the certainty of these day to day things – sunrise, seagulls shouting, dust trucks beeping, my alarm of songbirds going off.

Which stuff? My external stuff scattered across the floor of my living space. My internal “stuff”. One and the same. My stuff from within spewed up and out, my internal landscape laid bare in front of me, limiting and restricting me as I pick my way through it, obscuring the things I want, need, seek. I am writing. Stuff. Within these words will be things, words and ideas, resonances I want, need, seek. And the rest – is it just stuff? Or at another moment in time will it come to the fore as the precious nugget, and what’s alive now to me recede into stuff-ness. Stuff. Stuffy. Stuffing. What is stuffed with what. Chickens with breadcrumbs, onion and parsley, my mum up to her wrist in it. Body pillow wool stuffing, comfort of hugging sheep. Hugging trees. Softness, solidity. The different qualities of stuff. What am I stuffed with? What lies within – interesting I wrote dies. Light, soft, delicate. Dense, harsh, abrupt. Both, I contain both light and density, life and death. The potential for both. A seed. Stuff. I am writing. Stuff. Why stumped at seed? Where did that take me? Terrified by its compactness, its tininess, its potential, and the possibility of it being unlived. I want to buy a new pen. This one is halting, broken words. I want more flow, smoothness. Not – what? what words were there almost yet not quite? Not having to tip-toe around, step over, so much stuff. Just going with the flow, moving around, letting the landscape shape my route as I erode its sharp edges smooth with the intensity of time.

I threw away a ring too. Or rather it flew away of its own accord. Though afterwards it felt significant, so significant. I didn’t throw it away. Actually. It flew off on the last night of what turned out to be the last summer of my marriage. We’d had the ring made, as far as I remember. Three gold rings entwined - the same as my mother’s wedding ring. I always like the constant movement of three rings. Somehow they represent promise as opposed to harness or entrapment. One single gold band seemed to me to represent a kind of puritanical yoke. Three rosy gold rings turning, turning, always ending but never ending. A circle. We use circles, don’t we, to hold our hope in place? What ends must begin again. What is finite is also infinite. For years afterward you could have said, in fact I did say - it’s done, it’s over, the ring that was on the third finger of my left hand as I dressed but was gone by the time I entered the theatre and sat down late, in the darkness, just as the orchestra began to play. I felt my hand. The ring was gone. I’ll find it, I thought. But I never did. And my marriage ended.

But I know now that nothing ends; things move and shift but you carry everything forward. Your marriage is part of you, now. Your mother dies, but she is here today. Oh, it’s so simple. Don’t forget.