More on the grim pathology of trash-houses. I get shivers just reading this:
Inside, flashed up in the projector's illuminating beam, is a baby's crib coated in gray mold. Beneath it, scattered across the carpeted floor, are boxes of breakfast cereal–Wheaties, Life–and a pile of snagged lingerie. "Conception," Staffenson says, nodding at the next slide, "believe it or not, occurred here," on a stained mattress covered over with crumpled newspapers. "This was the home of a young couple who'd left the farm. The husband couldn't make it there–this was the late '80s and the economy was pretty rough for some. They came down to the city and he couldn't get work. She was 16, 17 maybe, pregnant, and just couldn't keep up with things. This is the toilet"–click–"past full, spilling over, so they just shut the door and started using a bucket in the kitchen. The nurse who drove out to the house went in the backyard and puked before she called me."
We spend another hour in the dark, tracking cases whose addresses no longer matter much. The particulars inside, after a while, appear like set objects in a series of still-lifes: the industrial strength garbage bags, the spoiled food, the buckets, the stacks of newspapers. Broken glass and a toddler with bleeding feet. Wrung-out diapers drying on a radiator. Kerosene lamps. Captain Crunch. Fly-paper. Aluminum cans. Cat litter trays made from detergent boxes. Coke cartons. TV Guide. The Eggert house, with a hide-a-bed buried four feet deep in trash, its sheets still on. The kitchen of another house where a 70-year-old man, living alone, was found in the middle of winter frozen to death, surrounded by junk mail and pet-food cans, with his feet stuck in the oven.
(via Making Light)
