there’s a bottle depository across the street from my apartment. anytime it’s open, there are at least a handful of Asian immigrants, shopping carts overflowing with bags stuffed full of bottles and cans, popping their wares in for credit.
It creates a constantly tinging of glass shattering as it’s counted and deposited, but listening to it is sounds more like bells than destruction.
I often wonder where these people have been – where they were born, what kind of life they’ve seen, the journey that brought them here and then what life is like for them now.
For whatever reason I usually picture them young and educated; doctors or the daughter of a wealthy businessman. I picture a moment of great bravery and hope at one point. The moment it clicked that they were going to get on that boat or trust that stranger with all the cash that they had and the moment they looked at the people around them and they knew they wouldn’t see them ever again and yet they still went.
And now, for all practical purposes, these people that must have been brave or canny or smart are now invisible. i walk past them every day and because they don’t have a voice or a twitter feed or a story that has “value”, they are anonymous. and i realize how fate is crazy and if the world were a bit different that could be me in on the other side of the world, scrounging the streets through other’s garbage to live.
I wish I had a translator.
Posted on May 2nd, 2010 at 3:22 pm by @uberblond
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