Collection of Found Objects

Musing into the void during the Covid shutdown of 2020

Every couple days, I walk out into my yard with a single poop-bag in hand to collect the turds that my dog has left there in the days prior. Picking up doggie-doo is a daily job, and why I think I can go out every third or fourth day with a single bag is pure idiocy. With the bag stretched over my fist, I begin picking up pile after pile, more annoyed and disgusted with every realization of another previously unseen mound just to my left or right. It’s possible I can get everything with just two bags, but that’s because I have large hands and I’m incredibly stubborn. Afterward, 99% of the shit is gone, but I still have to grab the hose and wash the remnants out into the yard.

When I walk down the sidewalks in my neighborhood, or when I’m out in the Chicago neighborhoods where we shoot exteriors for a TV show I work on, or even when I’m at a friends house, I always notice the stray lawn-sausage… the forgotten or ignored feces that’s just laying right on the ground- but seemingly invisible to the uninitiated?

This is what it’s like to care for a dog. But this is also what it’s like to confront the ignorance within myself. I put off the hard work of self-confrontation until it can’t be ignored anymore. And then it’s pile after pile of putrid ignorant shit that has to be attended to. And I’m always “surprised” at what I find but not really surprised. And then I take personal inventory and I make amends where possible and I hope that I can be a better friend and neighbor in the future. And then I walk down the street and see the old moldy dog dropping in the parkway, and the fresh piles of steaming soft-serve on my neighbor’s lawn, and I wonder if I’ve done myself a disservice by acknowledging the droppings in my own yard.

Hopefully, you follow. I don’t *want* to see the shit in the spaces that I inhabit that are not mine to upkeep… I do not *want* to see the ignorance in those around me. Because, to what end?.. I *want* to inspect my own yard, to keep it tidy, because it’s *MY* yard. My neighbor can tend to their yard as they see fit. But once you turn on the landmine-seeking goggles, once you train your eye on where all the flies are headed for cocktail hour… you’ll see it in all the spaces you inhabit whether they’re your vineyard or not.

So, I’m finding that as hard as I try to distance myself from ignorance, the more I will find it all around me. And, to be completely honest, I don’t know where to go from there. Because, ‘how does one hold themselves to a higher standard of being without also holding others to a higher standard as well?’ Somehow it doesn’t feel fair to hold others to the same standard I hold myself. If I hold myself to the standard of perfection, of a 4.0 GPA, of persistent above-average accomplishment, that’s well-and-good according to the sages of our day. But that’s not a fair bar to hold everyone else to. Let them show up according to their abilities.

Is it okay that my neighbor leaves his dog’s nuggets out for a day? Week? Month? Maybe I’m the one who is wrong, maybe I should be more relaxed about the million things going on around us. But, can I actually live with that? Could you?