As ancient man watched the seasons change, urban man watches for the recycling guy. Ours is a grumpy bastard, liable to leave your paper on the curb because it’s supposed to be in the blue box not the black one or spill your cans and bottles across the sidewalk because you have have violated some obscure blue-glass with red label bylaw. The cycles of nature, be they ever capricious. Things have improved since we started following Next Door Neil, who teaches anthropology at the local college. Neil, perhaps unsurprisingly, has an unparalleled grasp of the rituals of urban disposal—the color codes, the containers and the timing. Neil’s garbage always goes out on the right day, no matter what recent public holidays have skewed the collection day or time, and his recycling is always properly sorted and correctly laid out so that the grumpy recycling guy never has any reason to leave paper or spill cans or otherwise stain the street frontage with the signs of divine unpleasure. So instead of trying to figure it out ourselves, we follow Neil’s lead with blind uncomprehending obedience. When Neil puts anything out on the curb we wait until he’s gone, and then we run out and study it: bag or box? Tied? Covered? What’s in it, how far is it from the curb? Then we run inside and try to construct something that mimics it as closely as possible which we set out just so on the curb in an attempt to entice the gods to take it away and make space for more.