Colour Me Blood Red Howitzer

Tonight I'm throwing away some old broken toys, including this die-cast howitzer that I inexplicably painted red with old model paint sometime in my mid-teens. 

I'm torn my my relatively recent and ongoing urge to toss aside the detritus of my life. On the one hand, it's nice to get rid of things that simply take up space without offering any value. On the other hand, it feels like I'm finally acknowledging my mortality. Maybe it's silly to get so riled up over old toys, but at some point this thing (and others like it) brought me joy, and it feels like betraying the me that was to let it go. 

But go it must. 

Divinity at the Dump

On Saturday, Sylvia and I paid a visit to Edmonton's state-of-the-art waste reclamation facility, AKA "the dump." I know it's not really a dump, but I suppose I've been conditioned to think of it that way; it's the place where you dump things.

After our journey, Sylvia remarked how satisfying she found the trip. We both felt that way; dropping off a carload of cardboard, old electronics, our malfunctioning sump pump, and assorted household waste too awkward for the curb gave us a strange secular-spiritual lift, a materialist cleansing. Out with the old, the vanquished, the spent; give us room to breathe again.

Obviously it was just a trip to the dump. But I find it reassuring that both Sylvia and I take so much simple pleasure in it.