The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away" reader response

Ilya Kabakov, “The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away”
The article starts off with the story of a plumber who lived in an apartment. It had gotten exceptionally cold and it was necessary for the heat to be checked. Three grease covered men insisted to the chief tenant that they get into the plumber’s room. No one appeared to be there so they broke down the door and inside was piles and piles of trash. “The entire room, from floor to ceiling was filled with heaps of different types of garbage. But this wasn’t a disgusting, stinking junkyard like the one in our yard or in large bins near gates of our building, but rather a gigantic warehouse of the most varied things, arranged in a special, one might say carefully maintained, order” (32). The arrangement was quite spectacular and brings to mind the idea of what comprises “garbage.” Kabakov goes on to talk about how what may seem like trash to one person may not seem like trash to another because of the sentimental value it may possess. Or even still, how certain things may seem important, like post cards or old letters while common sense tells us other things are less important and therefore is trash and should be tossed out. Kabakov refutes this idea by saying, “Why should common sense be stronger than my memories, stronger than all the moments of my life which are attached to these scraps of paper which now seem funny and useless?” (33). He continues to theorize the importance of the “trash” in his life saying that it is the only true tangible artifacts that can confirm his existence by proving his past and that to which has shaped him. He concludes his piece by relating the whole world to a dump saying that “the whole world, everything which surrounds me here, is to me a boundless dump with no ends or borders, an inexhaustible, diverse sea of garbage. In this refuse of an enormous city one can feel the powerful breathing of its entire past. This whole dump is full of twinkling starts, reflections and fragments of culture…” (35). He states that we have lost the border of garbage and non-garbage and that everything in our world is cluttered in garbage. But on a positive note he ends by concluding that it is from this garbage that preserves and incites new projects, ideas and a “certain enthusiasm arises, hopes for the rebirth of something, though it is well known that all of this will be covered with new layers of garbage” (37).

The thing that really caught my attention most in this piece, that was touched on the least, but I thought most vital to the whole theory was the idea of time. I’m sure the thought has crossed my mind before, but I don’t think I had ever thought in depth about it until reading this article.
The concept of time is quite boggling. It exists only because we created it. And all we ever really have to prove the existence of time or even the existence of lives and life is through artifacts. I have a box in which I keep “trash” that I find valuable. Everything in the box has a memory for me that I want to keep safe and for forever. I never really thought before that perhaps the things I keep in my box are also for proof of my existence. Proof of the event and proof of time; of my past. And it is interesting, with this in mind, that our whole nation, society as we know it is based on tangible artifacts; things that represent the existence of our past. And how collectively people’s existence that exists only in tangible “trash” will, can, and has been buried under more and more accumulated trash. It’s not like we can gather all our trash or anything and just shoot it off our world into outer space. It is like saying that everything that was, still is. It’s almost comforting in a way, until you remember that after you die all your things will be sold in an estate sale and the person who bought your vase never knew your story or will soon forget. But perhaps your daughter kept your ring and gave it to your granddaughter and she passed it on and the memory of you travels along with it. Or maybe there is comfort simply in the thought that your vase and your ring still exist even after you cease to.