skit #26: polysomethings

Chester was no good with words. He was no good at milking the divine machine for miracles, no good at composing epics or operas, held no hope of postulating a plausible grand unification theory. But foremost, Chester never thunk a thought in the terms of words. Well, there certainly exist psalms and rhapsodies and proofs to be composed as Chester would, had he the skill, or approximated in the spirit of Chester by translators. So here is one such transcription of his ineffable thoughts:

The boss says he hasn't seen an eye quite like mine in his twenty years leading the Plastic sorting team. "Sure as hell better than those robotic sensors." Polystyrene, 06. Polyvinyl, 03. Polyethylene -- well, depends -- 01, 02, or 04. I can spot a recycling code fifty feet away. He calls me 'The Judge', says if I keep it up he'll get me a powdered wig and a gavel. He's right. I destroy that which cannot be recycled. So many polysomethings are culled at my whim, sentenced to burial in the landfill, never to feel a consumer's sweet caress.

I'm hoping one day I'll be with Glass. The boss loses all his favorites to Glass. My days spent wallowing waist-deep in packing peanuts, egg cartons, milk jugs; the squeaking-squirking friction; the incontestible correctness of chemical composition categorizations. Working in Plastic is a menial existence.

But Glass! That angelic tintinnabulation of cullet! The way the world is distorted by contour, by tint, by volume, by opacity! No concept of disposal haunts the Glass crew. Bottles are resurrected by recirculation, reincarnated in the melting furnace.

This is all something like poetry. There's no way, though. No way of spelling out the beauty of things. Why, no use in it. What do those words make? All the glass borrowed by us frail tenants will eventually be returned to the earth. But the plastic is contrived and will never rot. Where do words die?

Maybe there is my counterpart, a Lester. A Lester who could speak his thoughts, knows nothing of glasses and plastics, of borrowing and returning. He will have his gerunds, his phonemes, his motifs. He may fumble juggled quips, littering words which biodegrade. We, two complements, could really say something.

Perhaps Chester and his complement (and perhaps Lester and his complement) could return a little glass of their own.