Month: July 2018

stating the obvious

amybiancolli Uncategorized 10 Comments


Last month, I encountered this tree and its profoundly helpful signage near a crosswalk somewhere in our great Northeast. I won’t say where, only because I feel like draping my story in a cloud of mystery. I have no idea what the label means, other than “tree.” I have no idea who put it there and why, and I have no particular interest in finding out, although I’m guessing it has something to do with municipal streetscaping and the need for different civic bodies to communicate with one another, even when the communication requires one such body to state the obvious IN ALL CAPS on a stake in the ground.

Needless to say, I was greatly amused. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA, I said, or something along those lines. HA HA HA HA I GUESS THE CITY GARDENERS ARE HAVING THEIR SAY HA HA HA HA HA, then added, just for good measure: HA HA HA HA. And snapped a photo. Which you see here. Ha ha ha ha ha.

But then I started thinking heavily, which I tend to do a little more often than I should. I started thinking about Things That Are Obvious and Things That Are Said, and how often the obvious goes unsaid at the precise points in time when they really ought to be articulated. Like this point. Now. When what’s right and what’s wrong are being confused, when what’s real and what’s fake are being conflated, when up is down and good is bad and love is the not the opposite of hate but a convenience to be bartered and bought among the powerful.

We fancy ourselves creatures of deliberation. We regard ourselves as beings capable of complex reasoning and nuanced motives, but we are not. We are simple. We need labels. Indeed, we crave them. We want to be told who we are, why we are, whom to trust, whom to fear and which among us belongs to the clan.

And so I began to wonder whether everything should be painted in bold letters on conspicuous wooden signs.

The homeless guy panhandling for change: HUMAN. The toddler at the border, separated from her parents and stained with tears: CHILD. The politicians in city hall, in any given statehouse, in the U.S. Capitol and the White House, no matter who they think they’re working for and how they’re lining their pockets: PUBLIC SERVANTS. The trash collectors who lift your heavy-ass, stinky-ass, overloaded garbage into a truck every week: PUBLIC HEROES. The sacred place where we sleep and eat and laugh and hold our loved ones, no matter its location or its footprint or its worth: HOME. The people who live next door to us, no matter their beliefs, no matter their birthplace, no matter their habits or their accent or their orientation or their identity or their ethnicity or their color or creed: NEIGHBORS.

The neighbor who holds and treasures citizenship in this country: AMERICAN. The neighbor who doesn’t but yearns to: ASPIRING AMERICAN. The one who spews hatred in anyone’s direction: UNAMERICAN.

I could go on, but you get the gist. And one more thing: TREE.

 

the things we share

amybiancolli random cultural observations, random philosophizing, Uncategorized 6 Comments


On this day of American celebration, in this era of heart-wrenching division, I thought now would be a good time to assemble a list of Things We Share. This isn’t anything profound, nothing on the order of Dan Rather’s “What Unites Us” (which you should read, like, now). I’m not pretending to be a poet or philosopher or pundit or anything other than what I am: a citizen of this country, a resident of this planet and a compulsive scribbler of words who’s been trying like hell to make sense of who and what we are — what it even means to even be American in this distressed, discombobulating age.

So I asked myself: What can we agree on, these days? Anything? I came up with a few points of likely agreement. Please feel free to add more in the comments. Share, if you’re so disposed.  Let’s try to find consensus.

THE THINGS WE SHARE:

  1. We like holidays (most of the time).
  2. We like fireworks (all of the time).
  3. We like to laugh.
  4. We hate paying bills.
  5. We love our children and want what’s best for them, though sometimes they drive us nuts.
  6. We love our parents and siblings and spouses and friends, though sometimes they drive us nuts.
  7. We work hard and take our jobs seriously.
  8. We sometimes put in more hours than we’re paid for, but we do it because we need the paycheck and know the work is necessary and figure what the hell, it’ll come out in the wash.
  9. We wish the workweek were a little shorter and the weekend a little longer (but we still got paid the same).
  10. We like to eat when we’re hungry.
  11. We like to sleep when we’re tired.
  12. We love the beauty of a sunrise tinged with hope and a sunset tinged with sadness.
  13. We wish our bladders were just a little bigger.
  14. We like getting along with people but also kinda-sorta-maybe enjoy the occasional zing of a heated argument, but only if it ends quickly with no lasting rancor.
  15. We hate garbage night and wish it would go away (along with the garbage, too).
  16. We love taking showers — but not too hot,  and not too cold.
  17. We regard caffeine as the greatest organic compound in the arc of human history, at least at 6:53 a.m.
  18. We don’t like dental appointments, even when the dentist is a really nice guy.
    We have a hard time holding up our end of the conversation during dental appointments, even when the dentist is a really nice guy, and to be honest we get a little tired of staring at that poster of clouds on the ceiling.
  19. We hate trimming our toenails and wish someone would invent a gizmo that does it in our sleep and then disposes of the clippings without our knowledge.
  20. We prefer the smell of our own farts to anyone else’s.
  21. We worry more than we’d like to admit.
  22. We hurt more than we say.
  23. We feel lonelier in the dark than anyone realizes, no matter how proudly we strut or loudly we talk in the daylight.
  24. We hate pain.
  25. We fear death.
  26. We have faith in something larger than we are, be it God or life or love or art or entropy and the expanding universe.
  27. We want to be loved.
  28. We want to be held.
  29. When we hold a baby, we smile.
  30. When a loved one dies, we grieve.
  31. When someone asks us if we’re doing our best to live a good and decent life, we say yes.
  32. We don’t like to be judged.
  33. We don’t like to be insulted.
  34. We don’t like to be demonized as sub-human.
  35. We try hard.
  36. We stumble.
  37. We try hard again.
  38. We stumble again.
  39. We have dreams.
  40. At some point in our lives, some jerk suggested we didn’t have what it takes to achieve those dreams, and since then we have spent our every waking hour laboring to prove them wrong.
  41. We want to believe in humanity.
  42. We want to believe we matter.
  43. We want to believe our vote counts, our voice counts, we count.
  44. We want to believe in ourselves, even when we don’t believe in one another.
  45. We want to believe in America.