Waste Land

Today, I woke up with the idea that I was living the only way that anyone should ever live. It resided in the back of my mind, without me even noticing what I had created for myself- the thought that I was alone in the world.

Then I watched a documentary. 

It was called Waste Land. 

The story of a modern Brazilian artist, Vik Muniz. He traveled to a landfill in Rio de Janerio, named Jardim Gramacho, to create portraits out of the trash he finds there. People work there. People die there. But most importantly, people live there. They don't just exist, earning money to support drug addictions or to augment their wages from "prostituting themselves". They live there, with difficulty and dignity intertwined into the chaos of being a picker. Yes, a picker. A picker, if you can imagine it, of recyclable items. They go every morning to the landfill, dressed in gloves and hardhats (sometimes). They go through thousands and thousands of tons of trash. At the time that this documentary was filmed, Brazil did not have an recycling program. People would just throw all their waste away into their trash bins and dump it, diapers and milk cartons and rotten food and aluminum cans and melded together into a cacophony of residue. That's where the pickers come in. They throw themselves into that sea of garbage and they dig and sort and look and pick. They pick the items, recyclable items, that are worth the most money that day. It's the "stock market of recyclables". They then sort it, bag it, and sell it. They go home well after the sun has set, to the makeshift huts where they stay. And the cycle of the sun coincides with the cycle of their lives. It happens everyday. 

"It is not bad to be poor. It's bad to be rich at the height of fame with your morals in a dirty shame," says Valter, shortly before his death of lung cancer. To most of Brazil, if not all of it, these people are seen as lower than the garbage that they work with (if seen at all). They are what the rest of the country, in essence, have thrown away. Vik gave them a chance to tell their story, through the portraits that he created of them with the materials that they sort through everyday. At one point in the film, as they are looking through aerial shots of Jardim Gramacho, Vik's assistant says to him, "This is the first time that I can say that the place of you work looks better closer up than it does from far away. It's the human element that makes this such a beautiful project." Later on, as he looks out over the prominent city of Rio, Vik mutters to himself "It's not a pretty place unless you look (from) very far away." So, the place that is known, the place that is rich, the place that generate the garbage... That is the place that is the worst to be close too. That is where truly where the stink originates. Things are not always as they seem, for good or otherwise. Rich, or poor. 

Life in a combination of moments. Whether it be moments searching through trash or relaxing in your mansion, throwing away your recyclables, it's a collection. If we focus on those moments, one by one, it makes no sense. Lean back. Look at the whole picture. Are you making art with your moments? 

"I don't see myself in the trash anymore."

"Sometimes we see ourselves as so small, but out there, people see us as so big and so beautiful."

There are so many ways to live.

Click here to see the trailer. Watch the movie. It's on Netflix. Just watch it.