Have a Good Day!

I work in retail, so I hear this a lot. In fact, I hear it about as much as I say it. It's become (well, became a long time ago) a commonplace phrase, used by anyone and everyone to express a generalized sense of good wishes.

Repetition and familiarity of course lends itself to insincerity and non-intimacy. Case in point--have you ever heard the phrase "three little words"? "I love you" is so "commonly thrown around" (see all the quotes?) that we begin to question how genuine these phrases really are when they're spoken. The following question, then, is what do we mean by "have a good day"?

But if you deconstruct the phrase in itself, and think about what it is that you're saying, and think about what it is that you're meaning... you'll probably realize that you actually, genuinely mean it when you say it.

It's certainly not the other way around--I don't wish ill on anyone that I come into contact with. What else is there but to wish for the unification of joy?

Owing it all to nothing more than our similarities, our humanity, we're more in love with each other than we realize.

Connections

the connections we share
with others
are so much more important
than any of this
school nonsense

The Light at the End

Sick, I
lay in bed past ten
and mourn mortality.
It started Thursday;
so did work,
which I suffered through
like a champ, for four days.
Four days!
The yellow cuffs of
that black OfficeMax polo
crept up my arm,
tickled their way past my collarbone,
whispered terrors in my ear
and dove into my throat
day after day.
And somewhere now a bell is ringing
high above Denny Hall;
feet march off buses, down streets
up stairwells, through rosewood doors.
Class begins
but I’m not there.
I’ve suffered enough
at the hands of responsibility
and await instead the haven
of tonight’s softball game.

Tuesday

The sun was out, which,
being rare enough, was complimented by
the scarcity of days-off between Luke and I.
We headed for the beach.
It was, I think, a no-brainer,
considering the weightlessness of the rays,
the weightlessness of the backpacks not on our shoulders,
and of the music playing bright.

The beach was cold as hell,
but a length of rope, hung down from
the ambitious limb of some coastal tree,
provided counterwarmth,
both in times being had
and in the company of Greg,
a tall dark stranger
with dredlocks past his shoulders,
a black shirt and a nose ring.
His niche in the sand held a guitar,
some cheap champagne, whisky, and grass—

And everyone can appreciate a rope swing
and skipping rocks into the ocean
so we did that for a while;
a network of wispy clouds,
brushing against one another over the tide
and passing on to horizons not shared.

So Luke and I left our friend
Left champagne
Left whisky
Left grass

We bought some energy drinks and went on
with our Tuesday.

Sailboat to Nowhere

I'm on a wave tonight
which is not to say that I want to be
(or that I don't).
The moon offers a faint glow,
second-hand rays of light creep across the deck
where they give way to the shadows of the sails.
I'm on a wave tonight
which is not to say that I want to be.
Directional inclinations would be nice
for then I might know which wave
went where
or I could tell...
something.
I don't know.
This stillness is killing me.
How do they expect me to last
these weeks in solitude?
My chains clink in somber answer.
They don't.

Abandon All Fear, Ye Who Enter Here

So I told a friend of mine that I had based a character off of her in one of my posts (not saying which one) and she told me how scared she wast to read it, which I found funny... until I realized that I was just as scared for her to read it. No writer wants a person to be offended by their writing, let alone writing that involves characters directly influenced by that person.

Before I got her feedback, I was a little worried, and thought maybe I had made a mistake in telling her about it at all. But then I was like, wait... that's stupid.

We need to talk to each other. Not my friend and I specifically, but all of us as people. We need to share experiences and emotions and stories and our lives.

As I've said before, "We must, as a society, overcome the fear of addressing strangers in broad daylight." While that's not directly relevant to a friendship, it carries the same spirit.

I'm tired of being afraid of how people will interpret what I say. Why not just say it, and correct them if they're mistaken? The thing is, few as they may be compared to others, I have friends. And yeah, I want to meet new people and make more friends but if for example that doesn't work out it's okay.

In a way it's learning to live more with less, which is a sentiment I can latch on to.