The Bagman Cometh
Today was trashday.
On trashday, both the recycling bins and regular trash bins are placed out in the street for the custodial chariots to empty them.
But the bagmen get to them first.
There are all kinds of bagmen-- there was the one outside Thugz Manse this morning, calmly scavenging through a phalanx of blue bins, searching perhaps, for a golden ticket, or more likely, a dollar built five cents at a time out of a CRV worth of aluminum.
There are the were-bagmen, beings of such power and prowess, such awesome mystique that we can only make the vaguest suppositions as to their existence. Such men brawl and yell over the barking of Killer and Mr. Snufflewuffums (Thugz Mansion's resident K-9 units) in order to establish territorial foraging rights. Once, our fence was bent into the yard by the rubbish bins, where I can only suppose an exceptionally large or powerful specimen attempted to lean into our yard.
There are lesser bagmen, and greater, sadder bagmen and those that thrive. I saw a one-legged man hobbling down Vermont today, his leg forming a piston in conjunction with his crutchs. Clutched in his right hand, the omnipresent black trashbag that marks all bagmen.
Today, as I rounded the corner of 27th Street, I walked past the most average bagman I had seen yet-- two shopping carts, many bags, a few bundles, and a resigned look in his eyes as he lifted what must have been the latest in a long series of bin lids.
Slowly, I brought my eyes to bear on the paved horizon again, and was nearly transfixed in my journey, as I saw, dear readers, the archetype from which all lesser bagmen are wrought. Forgive me for my cliché, but truly, this man was the Ur-Bagman, The Bagman, the bagmen mothers tell their children about if they are into that whole cautionary urban fairy-tale type thing. I don't even think those stories exist, but if they did, this bagman would be the principal figure of a few. He would probably have not been the hero.
It sprang upon me as if I were in a dream, a ghastly phrase that encapsulated the final totality of this singular being's presence:
"The Bagman cometh!"
Yes, he was dirty, yes, he was downtrodden, his brow fixed with a leaden heaviness upon the Asphalt in front of him. But he was magnificent. Flanking him were his carts, his glorious carts spread behind him in a flying V, heaped high with hefty bags filled with the finiest refined bauxite the cola companies of America dare to provide. The matte bags were stacked highest about his shoulders, and lower farther back. He was wingèd, this bagman, shrouded in the blackest pitch of an avenging angel, as he shuffled and rolled down the street. Wingèd, a synthesis of man and machine and the discards of society, swaddled in dusty plastic, and here, reminding us of our sins and mortality, the very being of sepulchral decay and mineral immortality, a modern day vanitas reflected in the oily pavement.
And he was holding up traffic.
On trashday, both the recycling bins and regular trash bins are placed out in the street for the custodial chariots to empty them.
But the bagmen get to them first.
There are all kinds of bagmen-- there was the one outside Thugz Manse this morning, calmly scavenging through a phalanx of blue bins, searching perhaps, for a golden ticket, or more likely, a dollar built five cents at a time out of a CRV worth of aluminum.
There are the were-bagmen, beings of such power and prowess, such awesome mystique that we can only make the vaguest suppositions as to their existence. Such men brawl and yell over the barking of Killer and Mr. Snufflewuffums (Thugz Mansion's resident K-9 units) in order to establish territorial foraging rights. Once, our fence was bent into the yard by the rubbish bins, where I can only suppose an exceptionally large or powerful specimen attempted to lean into our yard.
There are lesser bagmen, and greater, sadder bagmen and those that thrive. I saw a one-legged man hobbling down Vermont today, his leg forming a piston in conjunction with his crutchs. Clutched in his right hand, the omnipresent black trashbag that marks all bagmen.
Today, as I rounded the corner of 27th Street, I walked past the most average bagman I had seen yet-- two shopping carts, many bags, a few bundles, and a resigned look in his eyes as he lifted what must have been the latest in a long series of bin lids.
Slowly, I brought my eyes to bear on the paved horizon again, and was nearly transfixed in my journey, as I saw, dear readers, the archetype from which all lesser bagmen are wrought. Forgive me for my cliché, but truly, this man was the Ur-Bagman, The Bagman, the bagmen mothers tell their children about if they are into that whole cautionary urban fairy-tale type thing. I don't even think those stories exist, but if they did, this bagman would be the principal figure of a few. He would probably have not been the hero.
It sprang upon me as if I were in a dream, a ghastly phrase that encapsulated the final totality of this singular being's presence:
"The Bagman cometh!"
Yes, he was dirty, yes, he was downtrodden, his brow fixed with a leaden heaviness upon the Asphalt in front of him. But he was magnificent. Flanking him were his carts, his glorious carts spread behind him in a flying V, heaped high with hefty bags filled with the finiest refined bauxite the cola companies of America dare to provide. The matte bags were stacked highest about his shoulders, and lower farther back. He was wingèd, this bagman, shrouded in the blackest pitch of an avenging angel, as he shuffled and rolled down the street. Wingèd, a synthesis of man and machine and the discards of society, swaddled in dusty plastic, and here, reminding us of our sins and mortality, the very being of sepulchral decay and mineral immortality, a modern day vanitas reflected in the oily pavement.
And he was holding up traffic.
posted by Max | 9:30 PM
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1 comments
