Junk as Art

Every quarter or so we get a postcard from the city announcing 'Large Item Pickup.' They promise to take lumber, furniture, appliances. They announce all kinds of rules and regulations. On the announced day piles appear at the curb. One of our neighbors had been accumulating odd items in one of their two driveways. Worrying that the house was becoming a hoarder house I was glad to see that a bunch of stuff is on the curb, hopefully waiting for the city trucks. (Which never arrive on the announced day, it sometimes is weeks after when they show up.) A piano stripped of its front and keys appeared among the neighbors stuff. It's amazing what accumulates and deteriorates in our lives. We have had some equally puzzling stuff hauled away from our place.

Oddly, since we are the downsizing royalty at the moment, we don't have anything on the curb. I'm not saying that we shouldn't have. I think there may be a few things in the storage shed that the city might pick up. But we have paid for hauling on a lot of stuff already. And nothing we could put out would look as forlorn and almost lovely as this old stripped piano in the rain.