trash

It's a weird place to start, but I want a big chimney to use for burning my trash.

Most of my trash that I'm talking about is small wood, and it's wood that will burn really sweet and clean. I mean, it'll burn really sweet, and, under the right circumstances, it'll burn really clean.

I can pile some of this wood into a little fire pot I've got, and it'll go up with a big tall flame and no smoke at all. There's some smoke that comes off it - a big dense mass of it - when I first light it, but once it gets going it just roars up in a big red flame and there's no smoke at all, and then when it dies down there's a little sweet smelling smoke for half an hour or so.

But, I maintain a small forest, and I have huge piles of this wood to burn, and my fire pot is just too small and not up to the magnitude of the job.

The thing is, I could just have all this wood hauled off, dumped in the landfill, but the idea disgusts me. I'm thinking about describing, in these posts, my insane experiment, or my "experiment in insanity". I'm not satisfied with the conventional approach to life. I don't want to participate. I want to live more authentically. I don't want to throw my trash in the garbage, like absolutely everyone does, and I don't want to live in a ticky tacky house, I want to live in one that's deeply lived in and built solid, by hand, a fully crafted house. I also want to have a richly aesthetic, artistic career, but that's sort of a separate topic. Anyway, I'm willing to put up with quite a bit to work on these goals.

I've been willing to put up with a lot towards that end. I've insisted on working towards these goals, and on running my life and, especially, my home, accordingly, which means putting up with a lot. In particular it means coming out looking quite insane.

Funny enough, there are people who have been willing to stick with me through it all, through twenty years and more of the experiment. They have their doubts, but they've stuck with me through it. But things have reached a point where I need to make a change. I need to either really swing into action, here, and get the whole out of control thing under control, or, I suppose, maybe, I need to abandon the project. Oh, well, I can't do that. I need to swing into action. And the good thing is, I'm still kicking. I think I actually can do this, or that I at least have a chance.

(I'm kind of a tough guy. I'm timid and afraid, and people think there's something wrong with me, really, because of that, and there is, but I'm also kind of tough. I can move a big ladder through a thicket by myself, and do it three times in a day. I can climb high in a tree and dangle by one arm from a branch, while sawing another branch with my other hand, and then climb back down and carry a giant bundle of branches through the thicket. Then I can cook a dinner, all while drinking glasses of heavy beer, without getting drunk, though I get sleepy and crash into bed early while my very tough wife washes pots and pans into the night. Then I'm up early, sitting in the cold writing for hours. I smoke heavily, and sometimes I cough violently, but I can do that, and it's no problem, and I can fight through a cold, and even worse, like it's nothing. And it all starts again, and I do it over and over and over. I can master my fear and move slowly and deliberately when traveling, or when meeting people, and talk to them in a deep guttural voice that I think must be sort of impressive, and maybe, if they think they need to get tough with me for some reason, I can turn on them in a way that makes them think again. But they will think I'm nuts. I need to work on that last bit.

Also, occasionally, of late, just out of the blue someone has told me they really like the look of my garden. This one guy says he's going to stop by for a chat, and this other guy says he actually wants the old car in my garage, which is completely buried in a collection of trash/art. I'm plotting to get it extracted, which is a major project. I'm a bit afraid both of these people are having second thoughts, but, whatever happens, these events seem to me to be little indications that I'm not completely on the wrong track, and that, if I focus, I might be able to make something of it all.)

So, this stack, it needs to be a big metal tube, ten feet tall, custom made, with certain structures inside it, and built into it, and I'll fill it from bottom to top with this trash, with small branches, broken into small pieces, and then I'll light it at the bottom, and the whole mass will go up in a big flame, and burn to ashes in a matter of minutes. And I'll also mix in a small amount of household trash, not anything nasty, just things which can't properly be recycled, like milk cartons and my cigarette buts. It's a responsible plan ... but ... don't tell anybody!