This big plastic take-out cup from Taco Bell with residual purple drink has been sitting on my cabin counter for WEEKS:
It’s been sitting here for weeks because I put it there, and I am resisting throwing it away.
Why?!?!?!? Why is it so hard for me to toss garbage like this?
Why do I clutter up my vision and counterspace with crap that normal people would know to dispose of promptly, with ease, and no sense of loss or second-guessing?
Man … here’s part of the problem. I can totally answer that question! AND HAVING ANSWERS THAT I BELIEVE IN MY TUM-TUM ACTUALLY JUSTIFY HOLDING ON TO TRASH IS WHERE THE CRAZY LIES! I know it, but I still *feel* something different.
Because this cup contains the residue of something precious and dreamy. Because this cup is aspirational. Because this cup is a reminder of what I want more of. OMFG I should be embarrassed but I still … I still hang onto this with a vice-like grip of insanity.
This was once a fresh ice-crispy fizzy-full container of the DRAGON PARADISE flavor of Brisk Sparkling Tea, sold EXCLUSIVELY at Taco Bell.
It is a purple-y colored “sparkling twist on tropical tea” . It is delicious in a way I can’t even describe! But drinkbrisk.com can:
Brisk Dragon Paradise is the perfect balance of tropical dragonfruit, juicy raspberry and blackberry flavor, and an uplifting hibiscus tea all in one refreshing fizzy sensation.
I love the color and flavors and the sound of it sloshing around against the see-through plastic container and sucking it up through the clear plastic straw. I love the taste and the aesthetic … all of the sensations of the purple in the plastic, and all from my favorite fast food joint.
Growing up in a small town with no stoplights and poor on top of it, I did not have access to fast food. In my junior year of university was the first time in my life I lived nearby to a Taco Bell, right at peak Taco Bell when they plunged into the open-late drive through world of the early nineties. THIS WAS ADULTHOOD!!!!!! This was my tween and childhood and YA dreams come true BUT BETTER!!!
In the decades since then, Taco Bell has again been elusive in my life. A distant dream longed for from afar by a homebody hermit without a car much of the time, and Taco Bell not being a good enough excuse to drive for hours.
In the past year, however, I’ve had to be on the road more for family (cancer), and sometimes even with reliable transportation enabling me to go to McDonald’s and Taco Bell on our limited budget, and order at these wonderful new kiosks where my neurodivergent ass can take its time to sort through all of the options without using speech. I LOVE IT. It is like a dream come true.
“It is like a dream come true” is the key to the hoarder mentality, I think. Most people would say this is a very small and laughable thing to dream about and feel so fulfilled by. I don’t know. Maybe it is. But little things are big things in my brain and my world. Maybe I should let go of them to make room for something bigger and more beautiful but I derive so much joy and pleasure from eating Taco Bell, and being able to select from so many delicious options, and now even fine-tune the amounts of sauce and rice and meat and cheese etc?!?!?! Oh my god!!!! From the days in the 70s when it was like I was asking for someone’s head to be brought to me on a silver platter when I ordered a plain cheeseburger with nothing on it from McDonald’s.
Food is never going to be something I take for granted. It’s never going to not make me super excited. And many forms of garbage are always going to hold some promising allure to me, holding some glimmer of a memory and/or possibility.
This cup reminds me of wanting to make satisfying, comforting videos of the fizz and the purple and the ice — the sounds and colors and bubbles. And I just don’t want to let go of the reminder. The knowledge that this is a possibility, to go to Taco Bell if I really want it. And the fear that it could be for a limited time only. That’s the only place you can get it, and who knows how long they will have it? So many favorite snack products disappear or are altered, like salt & vinegar microwave popcorn, or the fiery hot popcorn all the stores in town carry the brand but not that variety, or HOSTESS DING DONGS now revived, but NOT THE SAME AT ALL.
At some point I’ve kept the cup not because it was giving me pleasure anymore, but because I became curious when it would start growing mold. And then, when it didn’t, just really even MORE curious (and a little disturbed).
And then for the past week I’ve actually been ready to throw it away (even without the mold materializing), but I wanted to take a picture and be reminded to write this blog entry. So now that I’ve done that, I can actually throw it away. Let go while the moon is in its last hours of waning into clean cold darkness.
I am now prepared to throw this cup away, but with a new plan: to ride two rural long haul buses to a different “exotic” Taco Bell location I’ve never been to, where I will find my capital “p” Paradise, and maybe even have time to wave at passing freight trains.
Only available at Taco Bell restaurants, we want you to unleash the flavor, unleash your Dragon and find your Paradise!
I wonder if anybody on the buses will recognize they are RIDING WITH AN UNLEASHED DRAGON!!!!!!!!!!!!