No-one knows how or why this man got his head stuck in a bin.
Maybe he threw something away, unaware that it contained something precious, like his credit card, iPhone, or his wife.
Now, unable to even use his hands to sort, he’s left staring at the smelly detritus wondering what went wrong. His entire worldview is literally rubbish.
He can hear the muffled laughter of people standing mere feet away, not helping because his predicament is so visually amusing. And he must look like a gumby. What kind of brainless twat is unable to extract his head from a trash receptacle? This is why cats have whiskers, he thinks, so they can judge whether the hole is too small before barging right in.
Sometimes you go to sleep to clear your head and it doesn’t work. You wake up with your head stuck in the bin. All of your senses betray you. You are surrounded by waste, and it feels like you need professional help to get out.
Why is it that some people are able to avoid this scenario while others will remain trapped, unable to see beyond the brown lettuce on the discarded kebab wrapper?
Talking with a friend last night about someone who’d had an especially traumatic upbringing, he mentioned that she was someone who always had goals.
I have goals too, it’s just that sometimes they seem pointless. Like a striker standing, frozen in the middle of a soccer field after a bout of amnesia.
“I have to kick the ball through that rectangle?”
“Yeah, mate.”
“Then what?”
“You do it again.”
“Is that it?”
“Yeah.”
“How many times do I have to do it?”
“As many as you can, till the time runs out.”
“Shit. Really?”
“Yeah. It’s not easy, though. There’ll be other guys trying to stop you.”
“Why would anyone want to stop me kicking a ball through a rectangle? Why do they care?”
“Because they want to kick the ball through the other rectangle behind you.”
Maybe the man stuck his head in the bin on purpose.
Like in the Radiohead video for “Just”, where a man is lying on the pavement in the middle of the street, but refusing to tell anyone why as a curious crowd gathers. Eventually he does, and in the next scene everyone is lying down. For miles and miles and miles. Nothing but people lying on the road, their eyes wide open, dumbstruck at the horror and futility of the secret they’ve just been told.
A rubbish bin may be a horrible place to live, but sometimes it might seem better than the world outside of it. We can get so used to being surrounded by rubbish that it’s easier to live in it than keep going and possibly be told something that will make us lie down and never get up again.
I realise this is all a bit existential for somebody who probably got a bit pissed and did something so ridiculous that it got covered by the BBC. Maybe that’s all he wanted, though. For somebody to notice that he existed.
“I have goals too, it’s just that sometimes they seem pointless. Like a striker standing, frozen in the middle of a soccer field after a bout of amnesia.”
“A rubbish bin may be a horrible place to live, but sometimes it might seem better than the world outside of it. We can get so used to being surrounded by rubbish that it’s easier to live in it than keep going”
I love this; what an insight!
I think I meant ‘empathise’ rather than ‘sympathise’.
I’m sure someone does know the reason.
The first thought I had was of my friend, Pete I hadn’t seen for quite a while. When I was getting to know him, his girlfriend working as a counsellor was moving in. She had a gay male and lesbian friend and Pete now had his gay male friend too. He was studying to be a naturopath and helped me get my herbs at the practitioner’s wholesale price.
Then something changed. There was some violence and the girlfriend left. His behaviour was odd and he had problems with the neighbours and had to give up the rented house. The last time I stayed over, he was very excitable and very erotic toward me, but I was ‘allergic’ to his cigarette ashtray smell. Being of limited income and strange behaviour it scared away the prospect of sharing the accommodation with the myriad of university students in need. He kept up his tobacco dependency by going through all the ashtray ‘bins’ around West End and recycling all the butts.
I could never get a straight answer from him about his mental health; it seemed like an unusual kind of paranoia/schizophrenia to me. He was coming up to about thirty years of age at this time. I found him wandering through the streets and he would never tell me where he was living. His appearance was absolutely impeccable though, and another friend living in that area would keep an eye out for him. Once, I found him walking in the city and his speech wasn’t coherent at all. I gave him something to eat and took him to my friends place, where he started making a little more sense after a cup of tea. The last time I saw him was about three years ago. My friend hasn’t seen him walking about the area either. His ex-girlfriend had married about three years ago and had moved overseas.
The majority of people I once knew are not around anymore! I sympathise greatly with the childless elderly.
Anyway, in this photo here, I noticed what looks to be a VIP’s (visually impaired person’s) ‘guiding stick’ on the ground. Could it be that this person posted his letter then realised from the smell that it wasn’t the post?
(And now I’m reminded of another friend who lost his sight and died with a rare autoimmune condition…… It’s time to do some gardening.)