Going Through the Bins

On the way back to my digs I saw a man rooting through bins by the light of an iphone. My first thought, absurdly, was the News of the World. What dirt is he digging, on whom? But the News of the World takes no interest in the people of Stockton on Tees, not least because it no longer exists. So what is he looking for?
 
He discovers a pristine orange plastic carrier bag, folds it with an expert twist, and pockets it. What will that net him, 2p? How many plastic carrier bags will it take to buy what he needs? I immediately imagine that what he needs is drugs, but there’s every likelihood he’s just hungry. He's methodical, focused, not obviously desperate.
 
What else will he find? My imagination reaches into my own bin for what's lucrative there, and comes up empty. But this man knows things I don't. In what looks like a fruit punnet he has a whole collection of bits and pieces. His phone torch hardly catches them and I can’t see what they are.
 
I drift into the street off the pavement. I don’t want to alarm him so I've hit the middle of the street before arcing back to my side. His focus takes no dents. What jackpot does he hope to hit? I want to stay, look longer, learn something. I could even ask him, a possibility I never take seriously.
 
He wouldn't want to be embarrassed, I tell myself, by my questions about going through bins. The truth is I don’t want to be embarrassed by asking them. What would I be doing but going through the bins of human experience? I fear turning into that man, driven to the desperation and abjection I presumptuously assume for him. Is writing plays about human failures any less furtive? But I envy his focus, his expertise. His process is better-honed than mine.
 
At dinner that night Scott had told a story about a friend’s dog finding a pork pie under a bush in the park. Now every time the dog goes to that park it tugs its lead at that exact bush, certain it'll find another pie.

We’d been discussing what kept us doing what we do, making the work we make, when as often as not the result is a post-show walk back to a budget hotel alone, having entertained nineteen people in a crumbling arts centre in Worcester. Why do we do it? We keep going through the bins hoping to come up with a truth the world never meant to throw away, hoping to be rewarded with a pork pie.

---