Of butterflies and trash and art and many things.
Written by Susan Axelrod for the Washington Star.
Date: Unknown
There are butterflies everywhere in the living room of “The High Priest of Trash.”
Wicker butterflies perch precariously atop rocks in the corner waterfall, staring down at tiny goldfish and Day-Glo colored rocks. Butterflies hang suspended from mobiles, light on lamps and flock four in a cluster on a piece of metal sculpture. The black, yellow, and lavender walls, painted in languid, lazy curves, resemble a giant fleeting moth.
Butterflies are more than beautiful insects in Giovanni “Snuffy” Panciera’s life. To him they epitomize the impermanence of personal satisfaction which, it seems for Panciera, has always fluttered just beyond his grasp.
Among the lawyers and the bureaucrats, the secretaries and the stewardesses who live in his apartment building, even among his platoon of friends, Panciera feels like he is “nothing special.” But Panciera has reached for the kingdom of the special by dubbing himself “The High Priest of Trash” and providing ears for those who come to confess.
TO THE RESIDENTS of the Falls Church apartment complex where Panciera works, he is the clown who fixes their toilets and empties their trash, the sidewalk sweeper who performs a flawless impersonation of comic Steve Martin, the 35-year-old yoyo who wears knee socks, suspenders, and sun glasses without lenses, and the person to whom they tell their troubles.
But, to himself, he is a man whose life has been “a failure.” Both his marriages have ended in divorce. He has fathered a child who does not know him. His attempts to turn his painting skills, his “gift from God,” into a profit-making enterprise rather than a pastime have never materialized. His hope is to appear on the Johnny Carson show so he can “make more friends” and gain national recognition for his art work. His greatest regret in life is that he has “never achieved true love.”
Now, butterflies are his love. They are “the closet things to an angel on earth,” he says. “They’re made by God. How much more beautiful can you get?”
He blows kisses to his collection of butterflies twice a day after saying his prayers. When Panciera’s grandmother died, he place a butterfly in her grave.
PANCIERA GREW UP IN Anacostia. He was shuffled between foster homes, orphanages, and a mother with whom, he says delicately, he “did not get along well." He used to forage through garbage cans for food.
“When he was 13 years old, Panciera did not know the alphabet and could not count to 10. He was 4-feet-9-inches tall and weighed 69 pounds. When he was a little older, Panciera moved to his father’s house in Falls Church and there his stepmother, who he calls “the queen of the butterflies,” taught him how to read. He graduated from high school at the age of 20. “I’m not,” he says, “ashamed of that.”
After high school, he hitchhiked across the country and returned to Washington to be a “go-for” with a rock and roll band. He sold cars, ran an art gallery, worked as a bouncer in local bars, and put up window displays for a number of stores. He gave up being a display manager at one area store four years ago, leaving behind mannequins, merchandising, the fast life, and a $17,000.00 salary.
“I guess you could say I copped out,” said Panciera, who earned $4,000.00 last year. “Working as a trash man is easier. I have no rent to pay and no responsibility. "I don’t have to prove anything to anybody. It is a nice way to live and be free.” Like a butterfly.
“FOR WHAT I’VE DONE in my life, I don’t deserve a dog,” he says. “I could have given so much more so long ago, but I didn’t because I was selfish. Then, finally, I wanted to have something to give my friends, because they made me feel I do have something special.”
So first he gave them “the trash castle,” a one-bedroom basement apartment across from the laundry room. He painted a butterfly design on the wall. He built two sofas, the platform on which his console television rests, and a bar. He retrieved lamps, baskets, and ashtrays from the trash cans. And then he built the waterfall.
“It is a seven-year dream,” said the trash man, his eyes filling with tears as the running water gurgled in the background. “It goes back to when I didn’t have anybody or anything. I used to stay by the creek. Any creek. I used to just sit there, listening to the water. Sometimes I’d fish. Building the waterfall was the little boy in me, I guess.
“I brought the beauty inside,” said Panciera. “I clean toilets here, you know. I run home to my castle."
So do his friends, says The High Priest of Trash. They come to him “to reach themselves,” he says. “I can’t give them the answers to their problems, but I try to help them see their real feelings. I give them the fountain in the trash castle and help them help themselves.”
But Panciera realizes his limitations. “I’m not saint,” he says. "My past just lets me help others.” He quickly turns the serious statement into a joke. “My friends have been working on getting me named St. Snuffy of Falls Church,” he says, holding a cigarette between his thumb and forefinger a la Groucho Marx.
“I could really be funny on the Johnny Carson show,” says the trash man, lapsing into Steve Martin’s trademark “Excuuuuuuse me.”
“I’ve always been unique. I could make it on the Carson show as a trash man,” he says. “I’d never change if I was on the show,” he vows. “I’d like for people to know who I am. That would make me feel like I was out of the woods. And if I got some national recognition for my talent, maybe then I could say I’m really an artist and not just a kid from the trash dump.”
