I have an acute case of plastic guilt. I honestly don’t know what I am doing as a human at the top of the food chain. My guilt might be pathological. I ought to be a fuzzy woodland creature that makes cool stuff all day and which will rot away eventually. No meaning issues, no storage issues, no legacy issues.

Because of my extreme plastic guilt, I tend to be bad at garbage. I recycle what plastic that can be recycled, but mostly I just keep it around. For instance, those long twist-ties that hold things like lettuce together?

A piece of wire between a layer of plastic and a layer of paper - they could be useful! I curl them up artfully and keep them in a vase….I have been doing this for years.

Another collection I have is from the newspaper which comes once a week wrapped in a plastic bag and sealed with a heat sealed plastic strip. You know the ones?

This is about half a year’s worth.

I was tidying up this morning and decided this has gone too far…but what to do with these rigid strips? The only thing they are good for is to be a strong band around something or maybe I could weave them. So I started to weave them together. And since there weren’t really enough, I added twist-ties. And now half way through it is really boring looking, time consuming and a little annoying to keep doing, especially since now I’ve begun to make a mess. I started this because I was TIDYing

Let’s analyze the problem right now. First, white is not my first choice of color to work with. Second, what is it? It could be a small mat. Not really that useful decoratively or any which way. Then I start to think of course, it’s not useful…it’s art! It’s a commentary… here it is in process…

Oh, this is really funny. I’ve been doing this for a long time and took the photo…but only now can I read the words on these dumb twist-ties I’ve been struggling with for hours — can you read it? Enlarged on my computer, it clearly says, “Tagback.com to recycle.”

UH…yeah….read the fine print! My bad…hilarious!

Madeline Fan

Day 4