All right. After a brief hiatus I'm back. Where was I?
Well... first, with the Ironman World Championship being in town; being immersed within that collective energy got me hyped to surpass my personal record for the most amount of recycling collected in one day. No shopping cart. Hand carry only. No cash tips from strangers. I can't remember the exact number but it ended up being a bit over $30. Unfortunately, my vegetarian diet left me protein-deficient after that endeavor which I imagine made my immune system compromised and I awoke with some sort of "bug". Food poisoning? I don't know but it came with a gnarly fever and mud butt would've been an upgrade. While more of a technicality than anything substantial, I'm sorry to report that my dreams of making it through this whole "homeless" period without shitting myself has resulted in failure. A profound disappointment that left me shaking my head at the ground.
I'm doing great now though and the week-plus long purging was actually incredibly healing for me physically and mentally. My whole gut microbiome got cleansed and I came out the other side with a strong aversion to my previous morning routine of coffee and donuts. I've now cut out coffee and resumed eating meat. I also have a new granola potion I whip up at Island Naturals where you can mix all the seeds, spices, and toppings you want by the pound. It's like being a kid in a candy store but healthy and you can literally make something for $1 if that's all you have. The intricacies of the human body and psyche and the way they interact with food are so interesting to me. Hurdles like food poisoning just become an opportunity tweak and explore once the initial pain subsides.
The next reason for the delay? I finally got my laptop but was only really in the mood to listen to music and watch skating with this John Igei line at the top of this list. That dude is severely underrated. I can't wait to skate again and I wonder how beneficial this phase of hauling weight and walking Lily all day is going to be on my body and legs. Kinda feels like being on deck swinging three bats.
As much as I love the new copper mug I found in the trash I got a little bored with water today and the dude at the burrito place just hooked me up with a free soda. So, hello again caffeine and so long writers block....
Now, back to the original title of this post.... "An Ode To Canning".
What is canning might you ask? The word I came up with for collecting cans and bottles for recycling.
Part meditation. Part workout. Part scavenger hunt. Part urban hunter gathering.
I started doing it due to necessity but I have now grown to love it and it has become a central part of my spiritual practice.
What are the best parts?
Number one is freedom. No boss. No schedule. No set route. Go wherever you want and collect until you can't carry any more or until you're ready to get some grub. It's as simple and free as it gets.
You cannot put a dollar amount on the fact that on any single day I can decide to extend my morning stroke or prayer for an extra 30-minutes or take my time with breakfast first and start canning 90-minutes later without having to notify a single person ever.
Does the sun change the time that it rises for that roman clock tower? Nope. It's the other way around and that's where I'm at these days.
In my previous career as a 1099 contractor it was extremely rare to actually be able to fully control my own schedule like this. Legal? Not even close. It's called leverage and institutional narcissism though dum dum.
I'm so glad those days are over and I now sleep in a bush along Queen K. highway.
The age old saying "money doesn't grow on trees"? Well.... maybe not on trees but if you can get over trying to fit in just start peering into that smelly garbage can next to you and a free 5-cents exists nearly everywhere. At the shopping center. At the retirement home. At the medical office. It's the gift that keeps on giving and those 5-cents add up pretty quick. It's quite miraculous when you think about it.
No rent? Think health insurance is a scam and take responsibility for your own health? No bills other than a $30 storage unit and a $5 phone plan? You can make $20 a day stretch pretty far and if you pull in less one day just fast or go get yourself some $1.49 kaiser rolls for dinner. God always provides and it's a great privilege to now know this in my bones. Money is no longer the primary form of abundance in my life.
The second best part about canning is autonomy over my consciousness. It takes very little brainpower to collect recycling. I can contemplate whatever I want while I'm doing it. Ponder solutions to world problems. Come up with ideas for creative projects. Fantasize about you know who. All things I would be doing on my day off anyway but instead I have now become a master multi-tasker that works out and saves landfills at the same time.
Kailua-Kona has steep hills and carrying an 89.6L backpack filled to the brim while walking a dog and hauling pounds of dripping beer cans in hand is a full body experience. I've visualized how many cans I'm moving each month in A.I. too and it's rewarding to see. When you're tearing open garbage bags in dumpsters and picking out cans one by one you have no doubt that that stuff would've ended up in a landfill otherwise. No one else ever has to tell you or estimate your impact. You see it first hand everyday and that's a currency in itself.
The third best part is that it requires very little human interaction. All I have to do is roll up to the redemption center, tell them my count for the plastic (better than getting paid by weight), sign a receipt, and say thank you. If someone speaks to me there or out on my route and I don't want to talk to them? I don't even have to respond and it's not going to jeopardize my job. I can be fully authentic and stay on mission. Plus, it removes as many possible opportunities for these goons to create an abusive wedge between me and something I need access to. Persecution and being heavily surveilled are very real reality for me these days and being locked into a fixed schedule with any sort of corruptible "authority figure" would be a major risk. Canning keeps those Wile E. Coyotes running into brick walls left and right and me smiling into the sunset.
The number four best part? Finding order in chaos. Recognizing patterns in the seemingly random world of people throwing things away. Where do cans and bottles accumulate most? What about leftover BBQ for Lily if I'm short on dog food for a few days? What about broken phones I can recycle for cash at the Eco-ATM? Why in Hilo is there always only one shoe falling apart but in Kailua-Kona it's usually two that are just lightly used? How come it's as if every single human being that drinks Modelo neatly packs the finished cans into the cardboard box for me to discover like a piñata full of nickels? And take my word for it... if there is any sort of bag... paper, old popcorn, you name it, and it is taped shut with duct tape or similar. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT OPEN THAT BAG. Calmly move along and divert your attention elsewhere.
(This is a work in progress and after here is even more rough......)
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Number five is the element of surprise . I've found money in the garbage. $10 bills. $40+ in a saltwater damaged purse that just needed a little olive oil to get the bills usable again. When you find money in the trash you just start laughing because it's so absurd. Absurd in the same way that there's a secret back door to spiritual enlightenment in the last room at the end of the hall of most psych wards. I've found kid's artwork in the garbage that their parents threw away. That honestly is what makes me smile most. If you had x-ray vision for energy I guarantee the dumpsters that have children present in the home are glowing way brighter than any of those child-free dumpsters filled with broken sunglasses, cologne, and empty fireball shooters.
If you put money before energy you're going to feel like a slave doing this. That's how it felt for me at first. I was on another part of the island where it took four times as long to get the same amount of cans. It rained a lot. The pavement was rougher and it would leave holes in aqua socks and eventually the bottom of my feet. I titled the initial meal I would strive for every day the 'Hot Dog Jamboree' and I refuse to ever lookup what the word jamboree actually means. I've got my own definition and in this instance it means two $1.49 Nathan's hot dogs from Safeway, one 94-cent bag of Great Value chips, and $1.37 small refillable soda from Mcdonald's. I'd sing this work song I came up with on repeat while pushing a shopping cart down highway 11 near Hilo airport and .....................
Once you break through to the other side and master the art of it you truly start seeing the value in it though. It kinda feels like card counting in Vegas and no one seems to be bothered by it; they just keep giving you free drinks.
Just like the meaning behind my name Erik, I'm certain I came up with the idea of having it called a redemption center before I incarnated on Earth as this Christ fellow.
I've polished a lot of turds for people. Might I go as far to say I built an entire career on it? Maybe.
This homeless thing though? This one's my turd and boy is it special. I wake up these days with more excitement to edit that breakfast at Island Naturals mixing sub 25-cent seeds and spices by the pound than I ever did editing someone's commercial for $1k/day.