I’m quite taken by the three lines Archie used at different times to refer to Stargirl to the adult Leo, my favorite being “The recycler of our garbage.”
What I like about it is the clear imagery of taking something messy and making it into something clean and useful. I tend to think of garbage as useless, a space-taker. It’s like the clutter of the planet. And I see recycling as transforming one thing into something else. It reuses rather than wastes. It’s a loving act in its purest form, like how the flame of one candle can light an infinite number of other candles.
Someone who can take garbage, our garbage no less, and make it into something else has tapped into what it means to be human at our deepest levels.
To illustrate this and as a conclusion to this class, I offer you this video:
Plastic to Oil Fantastic from UNUChannel on Vimeo.