treasure island.

Trade/Trace/Transit made cardboard waste part of my life. Before then, even though cardboard waste was obvious, it was invisible to me. When I started paying attention, I started seeing them everywhere.

Like at the back of Treasure Island.

That was my first time walking to Treasure Island, on 55th Street. I was lucky I happened to walk from behind it, and saw the pile of bales of waste cardboard first. I didn’t even know it was Treasure Island, and the cardboards spoke to me first. “Eggs,” a couple of them said, “keep refrigerated.” This was the exact wording I’ve encountered several of them saying in Hong Kong. Some cardboard waste, dear reader, are very cosmopolitan.

The following is an imaginary conversation between me and the manager of Treasure Island.

“Why would you want to do that?”
“Well. I’m an artist – I draw on waste cardboards. I saw your bales of waste cardboards and -”
“- but why would you want to do that?”
“Um. I- uh. I’m an artist,” as though being an artist grants you the rights to do something aimless. (Fact: the rights, perhaps yes. The money? Never.)

It’s never aimless, though, dear manager of Treasure Island. Sometimes it just takes too long to explain, too complicated to describe with words, too convoluted to blurt out simply like any twists and turns of anyone’s trains of thought. And so I’d just be glad if you’d let me show.

But yeah. Sometimes, honestly, I just don’t know why, and I’d just do it. And usually I would find that it’ll make sense later. Maybe simply because everything will eventually makes sense, at one point or another, in someone else’s or our lives.

No.

Um. Okay.

And so I would go back at night, with my Molotow™. But not long after I would leave again because I’d be too afraid of meandering guns.