It is difficult for me, living in downtown San Jose as I do, to go for more than a day or two without seeing a neighbor rummaging through garbage in his search for food. It seems so clearly unacceptable that our community should permit the sort of poverty that would lead to this desperation, yet there it is, out in the open. The very act should be a rebuke, but a rebuke to whom?
For most of us, on the occasion we witness this loathsome act, there is an accompanying pang of something--maybe sympathy, maybe guilt, maybe disgust--but then it is gone. What we almost never do is hear the voice of the person who is doing the scavenging. Here is a fragment of that voice, the voice of Lars Eighner from his 1993 book "Travels with Lizbeth":
"At first the new scavenger is filled with disgust and self-loathing. He is ashamed of being seen and may lurk around, trying to duck behind things, or he may try to dive at night.... Every grain of rice seems to be a maggot. Everything seems to stink. He can wipe the egg yolk of the found can, but he cannot erase from his mind the stigma of eating garbage. That stage passes with experience."
It is difficult to decide which is the more disturbing portion of this excerpt--the repellent description and indignity of dumpster-diving, or the desensitization to it that eventually comes.
For most of us, on the occasion we witness this loathsome act, there is an accompanying pang of something--maybe sympathy, maybe guilt, maybe disgust--but then it is gone. What we almost never do is hear the voice of the person who is doing the scavenging. Here is a fragment of that voice, the voice of Lars Eighner from his 1993 book "Travels with Lizbeth":
"At first the new scavenger is filled with disgust and self-loathing. He is ashamed of being seen and may lurk around, trying to duck behind things, or he may try to dive at night.... Every grain of rice seems to be a maggot. Everything seems to stink. He can wipe the egg yolk of the found can, but he cannot erase from his mind the stigma of eating garbage. That stage passes with experience."
It is difficult to decide which is the more disturbing portion of this excerpt--the repellent description and indignity of dumpster-diving, or the desensitization to it that eventually comes.
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