While I was emerging from the ocean during our recent beach vacation in South Carolina, I picked up a piece of trash, a torn plastic Dasani water bottle label that was floating on the surface. I carried it up the beach and tossed it into my basket behind our umbrella, and then I dropped into a chair for a nap. When I awoke, I was surprised to see that the label was gone; a few minutes later I realized that the label had become a flag waving atop my son’s sandcastle. It was no longer trash. The location of the label determined what it was. Floating in the ocean – it was trash. Wedged in a split reed and stuck in a pile of sand – it was an ornament, a flag.

On this same trip my wife was looking for sea glass (basically pieces of broken bottles (trash) that has been tossed around in salt water). It changes to “sea glass” primarily because it’s found in a new place. Still, it’s clearly not the same piece of glass that originally entered the ocean; the ocean has changed it, too, battering it around and such. Nothing can ever really claim to be unchanging. Pocahontas isn’t the only one who can’t step in the same river twice; the broken bottles didn’t only change into sea glass; their “river” continued to change when my wife later made the sea glass into jewelry. The wisdom of Disney is inspiring.

Everything changes location all the time. As Alfred North Whitehead wrote, “where does [a] chair end and the rest of things begin? Which atom belongs to the chair, and which atom belongs to surrounding space? The chair is perpetually gaining and losing atoms. It is not exactly differentiated from its surroundings, nor is it exactly self-identical as time slips by.” The chair (and every other physical object) is part of a micro-river of atoms that is constantly changing location on a very small scale.

My life is filled with macro-examples of trash that became something else because of a change in location. Most recently, I discovered a perfectly good piece of art in the trash, a framed picture of Jimi Hendrix; I moved it to our gift closet where it is now called a 2007 Christmas present for my brother-in-law. I’ve observed the reverse location/identity change, where “true” trash (e.g., broken ceramic tiles or scrap metal) has been relocated to a studio where it is glued, welded, or otherwise combined to create art. I think that some of this is even visible over our northbound 315 guardrail, and I know that I used to observe this happening in the back yard of the artist next door.

Our physical relationship to objects makes a difference. Where an object is determines what it is. When a Palmetto Ale bottle contains beer in the refrigerator, or in my hand, it is a beverage container. When it’s empty, and is placed in the bin for brown glass, it’s recycling. When the recycling truck is driving on highway 520, hits a bump and loses the bottle in the Ashley River, it’s trash. And when it flows into the Atlantic, breaks and bounces around on the floor of the ocean for a while, it’s sea glass. When it’s dangling from my wife’s bracelet, it’s jewelry. Context is everything.

And as usual, this related to much more than just trash. Everything we have and everything we use (e.g., my house, a baseball, my cell phone, my neighbor’s Prius, the International Space Station) is made out of stuff that we found lying around on the surface of the Earth, or just a fingernail-scratch beneath it. Sure, we’ve modified much of it, but it was originally just lying around in some elemental state. And context is everything; all those things were at one time just “Earth debris”. As they became interesting to us and we moved them into their new useful positions, we started to call them by other names (e.g., swords, fortifications, firewood). Some debris changes only once, while other debris changes many times as it moves down a river of existence that is unique each time we step into it.

Even earlier than our modification of Earth debris, we experienced the daily location-specific identity changes of our food. When a particular piece of fruit is on a tree or in my hand, it’s a mango. When I eat and start to digest it, the identity of the mango blurs as the minerals and pulp that used to be “mango” begin to incorporate into my own body. At that point, where is the mango? What is the mango? Part of it becomes part of me, and part of it leaves me to become part of another life cycle. In both cases it’s the same mango-debris, but in a new location. Just like the Dasani label and the sea-glass.

Location identity also applies to my personal behavior. “Where I am” affects how I act, too. This was most striking for me during my first year or two of college. As I attempted to settle into an identity (or carve out a new identity) at school, I noticed a shift during the rides home and back to school with my friends. I noticed myself preparing to be with a new group, preparing to take on a new role. Today I am still far from whole and integrated. When I am at work, I act the role of employee. When I am with my parents on a vacation, I am a son. When I am with my wife, I am a husband. When I take my daughter to school, I am a father. And on it goes.

Perhaps the most surprising realization is that my body itself is one of these changing rivers. My hair is part of me until it is left on Michael’s salon floor, my fingernails are no longer “me” when they end up in the wastebasket, and my skin silently flakes off, separating from me, disintegrating, and becoming soil in the landscapes where I live, work and play. Just like everything else, I am dirt (Earth debris), albeit a more highly organized form. I am part of a river of dirt intersecting with other rivers. When parts of me flaked off during our summer vacation and fell in the sand, they even became part of a South Carolina beach. Spending the week there was good for me; I came back a different person.