1.13.2009

Umbrellas


Anger has no place in constructive thought and neither does the ability (or inability) to explain yourself. Thinking isn’t speaking. It isn’t even monologuing. Sure, we may, from time to time, convince ourselves cognition is some perfect sentence. I can catch myself saying, “At noon I’ve got to go get sauce for dinner tonight,” but that’s rare and (quite frankly) boring.

What supersedes language?

Sure, emotions are the “true” answer. I’m even sure if I ended up pontificating about them you’d turn to your friend (or pet) and say, “Why am I reading this shit if I can get it and a plot line (somewhat) from a Ms. Steel novel?” (1) - that's a footnote, go ahead, check it out.

Think about it, we give things names that aren’t relatable. For example, imagine an umbrella. It’s utility, at its most essential, is to keep rain, sun, snow, or frogs, from tumbling down onto your clothes (2). Take that same umbrella and poke holes in it. It’s suddenly lost its function and is deprived of meaning. Yet, if the fabric is torn away and the parasol is like the rusty skeleton of a bird, we’ll call it an umbrella. What's the deal? From name to moniker, I guess.

I had a rough day today. I don’t know why, but I can’t explain it. Sure, I could give you a sense of what happened - tell you about how work was frustrating, how I wished some things in my life were different, but it wouldn’t give you the exact feeling of what I think. Sometimes the “rough” days are the worse because you realize, with growing maturity, that you’re healthy, loved and well - and that some things aren’t worth stressing over. But we all do it anyway. In fact, this evening I had a small conversation with a friend about how “people just want universal relate-ability. Every medium of human discourse, interaction and social dynamic is saturated with a lust for relate-ability.” My friend was one the wiser, and reminded me of the beauty of it all - this feeling and its relentless pursuit creating originiality and brilliance. She was right, I was wrong. Typical outcome.

So language fails me on days like today. Hell, it fails me most days. Sometimes I even feel like it fails everyone and every good line is just parallelism - words that run side by side with the real emotion; and we reward them

every time

for being “ooooooooo just so close.”


Footnotes:
1. I assume Danielle Steel, however “oooooo just so close” with romance and her uncanny ability to process it, is not married. I was going to look it up, but then I saw a shirt (probably going in the hamper anyway) that needed folded and had to make a decision. I flipped a coin.
2. P.T. Anderson reference. Look out!