Cleveland
The pile on the table just grew. The script got there. I put it down, on top of its envelope, actually. A manila envelope, torn at the flap, ragged, flattened under an inch thick ream of white sheets, is its skimpy bed. Then some cards, large and small—not neatly stacked but askew—so that sharp corners are sticking out here, and ripped and shredded flaps reaching out there and at every elevation, as if straining to escape the pressure from above. Brads glint from between tight clumps. They’re holding together other complete scripts. Their sharp points threaten. The smooth button heads seem to cower—sandwiched and squeezed—impaling, but in the grasp of their prisoners. This pile lives. It keeps growing, and I keep thinking I should do something about it.
Answer the letters? Respond to the sender of the cards? File away the scripts and notes. Copy addresses into my book. The pile gets bigger. It skitters some, almost topples, one day, so I reduce it by starting another pile with the topmost pieces. Two piles are breathing there. Breathing and breeding, it seems. I’m beginning to realize that some of this stuff is disposable. It’s been acknowledged, so it can go now. So why don’t I dump those items? The pile defies me; dares me. It’s spreading. Paper. The paper plague, paper spawn: sheets, envelopes, note slips, receipts, catalogues, brochures, flyers, bags—some small (I might need just this size, small enough for just one bagel), large (this red one’s good, and pretty, for a gift) and that silver bag with the handle, a shame to just toss it, it’s so well-made; and the wrapping papers, ripped out magazine pages, letters, notes, schedules, and calendars. Paper! Can you imagine banning paper for a week—a year? What a relief that would be.
Most of what’s printed is poorly written. Most of the information is useless, redundant, or inaccurate. Most of the stuff advertised is not needed. Most of the news is awful, frightening, and disgusting; contributing only to further disease in the reader. It’s not useful. So little paper matter mattes. Let’s conserve our words, and our trees. How much toilet paper, how many colors, patterns, scents, thicknesses, and textures are needed? But the thing about toilet paper and facial tissues is that they get tossed. Always. Well, almost always. Come on, do you have the guts to admit it? Don’t you hang on to that paper towel into which you blow your nose only once, only a little bit? Don’t you fold it over and shove it back into your pocket, so you can use the rest later? Do you ever wrap up the small tissue in a bigger handful for a bigger sneeze later? Finally, you clean out your pockets and bags. Scrunched up little peculiar bundles—some with hardpacked centers, splaying crimped corners in all directors; some larger folded packets barely used, all with some good use left in them. Old now, taunting now, tired, due to be discarded; all scream at you and squirm to be released, freed, allowed to go to the trash, to die a dignified death after good service, to leave room for more stuff; coins, paper clips, rubber bands, restaurant receipts, and other paper!
And those cards at holiday time. Oh, look I haven’t heard from them forever. Oh, oh, no return address. Maybe I should look it up, and write back. This is a good card. I should keep this one. That’s a sweet message. Nice note, I’ll answer this one. Mm, that’s, let’s see, eleven now that I should answer. Well, I don’t really have to answer. She didn’t say I should. There’s that question he asked, though. Damn, which car is it in? hey, wait, just because I don’t send cards—except maybe to a few close friends and, you know, family—that doesn’t make me wrong, does it? I don’t owe anybody. They write because they want to. They’re card people. They don’t expect replies. Do they? Nah. Relax. So, just keep these around. When the holidays are over and things are calmer, you’ll have plenty of time. Paper! The paper chase. The paper pressure. Paper, paper, paper, paper. If you were to burn it all today, life would go on, and there would be no problem left over. Is it meaningful, or is it a mania? Is it a need or just a substitute, another device to help us perpetuate and promulgate more lies? Lies we agree to live by. Commerce and confusion. Box office, melodrama, moneymaking, money makers, conveyors of profit gainers. Or is the paper sincere? Sincerely helping out? Does paper bring the only condition worth having: peace, of mind, of body, of heart, of the immediate world I live in? Peace? Peace is downright exciting. Peace is excitement. Try to reconcile those two, conventional folks.
Paper is used to gain advantage or profit. Without it, there shall be no law games, no obfuscations, maneuverings, film-flam, or gross miscarriages. Without paper, there could be no major larceny, no major government misappropriations, no poison pen letters, no lies in newspapers, no printed gossip, no mail bombs, no broken contracts—well, not major broken contracts, treaties, for instance. Without paper, there would be no major religions, with their greed, deadly terrorism, separatism, and self-serving hypocrisy. Have I gone too far? Has the paper fever overtaken me? Am I raving now, in delirium? In foolish excess? Paper can do that to you.
Okay, I’m calmer now. Without paper, we could still sing and play music to one another down through time. We could tell and perform plays, dance, tell stories and poems one generation to the next, speak various languages to one another across oceans and lands. We could. We could do all that without paper. We could eat and give gifts without leftover paper. And we could still have the trees. We’d get to keep the trees. All those trees, think of it! Just growing and feeding the insects that feed the birds that feed the mammals and reptiles and pollinate and reproduce, give us oxygen, rain, and fertile soil, that give us life itself; that are life itself. And the rivers and oceans might run clean again, and not be choked by the chemicals that are dumped in them while the paper is being made and the trees are being ut, stripped, and treated. Treated. Untreated for a change. What a treat! For us all.