From a picture of an empty gum wrapper, comes ‘xtra care’, the story of a piece of gum tossed into a garbage can on the street, landing on the rim, and being taken, eventually, by a starling to great enough heights to see the beauty of the land before being dropped again on the pavement and being forever changed.
I love the fairy tale quality of this, which reminds me of a series of exquisite chapbooks (The Oldest Cowbird, and The Apple Lovers among them) den Hartog put out in 2023, in the genre she calls Beatrix Potter for grownups. Tiny powerful stories wrapped in a kind of simplicity that sneaks up and astonishes.
Tell me you’ll ever look at gum the same way again.
♦
This is why I continue to run the project. I am honest to god constantly gobsmacked by the alchemy of making amazement from literal rubbish.
** ‘xtra care’ originally published September 2, 2015.
Please re-enjoy.
After he ate his oniony hotdog, he pushed a piece of gum into his mouth. Tasty as the hotdog had been, he wanted something powerfully refreshing to erase it. As he chewed, the gum came to life: zesty, minty, spicy. Twenty minutes later he disposed of it in the garbage, for gum was not recyclable nor compostable, and he cared; perhaps not in an Xtra sort of way, but to a certain extent. He flicked the gum and the empty pack at the stinking, overstuffed garbage can, not noticing as he walked away that the gum had landed on the rim and sat stuck there, a tiny head, watching him go.
All day people passed the fetid garbage can, sometimes flinging rubbish in. Bits of trash tumbled out and merged into the wider city. Bottle caps rolled into the street and were smashed flat like medals won, or coins of unknown currency – something worth something, somewhere. Gauzy produce bags were lifted high and floated until the branches of trees caught them and held them safe from harm. And all through the afternoon and into the dark, quieting night, the little ball of gum sat, as if waiting for the man to return. An emblem of perseverance, of patience. A nod to the everlasting. Gum, after all, was forever.
Come morning, birds emerged before people stumbled from their houses. Flocks of pigeons swooped circles in the sky and then lined themselves up on sleeping rooftops. But it was a starling who landed on the garbage can and jutted its head toward the little ball of gum. Jut-jut, blink-blink. The yellow beak parted and plucked the gum from the bin. Up up up went the gum, clasped tenderly by the bird’s beak.
From above, it was easy to see how the waking world was criss-crossed with delicate bindings that strained to hold it together: roads and rivers and mountain ranges and rows of buildings and lines of cars and banks of wild grasses and hills and valleys of trash that formed patterns indiscernible from down below. Round as the earth, the little ball of gum had never felt less significant, nor more alive, than in those last beautiful moments before he was returned to the street where everything had begun for him. Down down down he was carried. The starling opened his beak and let the little ball of gum fall out onto the pavement, and in no time he had dried and flattened and made a lasting shape of his own. Day after day the people passed over him, including the man who had purchased him and chewed him and somewhat carefully disposed of him. The man never knew of the gum’s journey, and he went whistling through his days until his days ended.
But the gum knew, and would always remember.
♦
Kristen den Hartog is a novelist and non-fiction writer. Her latest book, The Roosting Box: Rebuilding the Body After the First World War, explores war’s profound impact on ordinary people, and the medical innovations and societal changes it spurred. She lives in Toronto and in Lyndhurst, Ontario.
She can be found at www.kristendenhartog.com
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BIGGEST LITTER PEEVE?
Den Hartog: It often occurs to me that “the litter I see” on city sidewalks is garbage for the body as well: chip bags and chocolate bar wrappers and cigarette butts. Things that shouldn’t have gone in in the first place! Though admittedly I’m guilty of the odd junk-food binge….
The Litter I See Project 