6/15/2018 1 Comment "Friendly"What does it mean to be “Friendly”?
I was scrolling through IG today, and stopped on an ad for campers/mobile homes. At the bottom of the image of an old Airstream Trailer, it read “Friendly”. Now there is a word that I rarely use, if ever. I also rarely hear it. It used to be a word I used. But that was in another life, a long time ago. In that other life, “friendly” was not an adjective, it was a noun. It meant: “We’re comin’ in”, We’re on the same side”, “Where do you need us?”, or “We’re here to get you the fuck up outta here.” It meant tons of things. But the gist was always this: we’re here, we’re united, we can do this, we will win together. Oddly enough, some months back I stumbled on a word while researching the Rhodesian bush war, and it’s a hashtag I now use: “Pamwe chete”. It’s a phrase from the African Shona language. It means “Forward together”, or “All Together Forward”. At first, I just thought it sounded cool, but when I found out what it meant, it was no wonder to me. Words and language can be funny things. And the meanings we attached of them may have absolutely nothing to do with the word itself except in some ancillary disconnected way. Or they could just have different meanings in different lives. The fact that this is the day after Memorial day is not lost on me either. It’s just one more way that old life reaches out and steers this one. So here’s to those other lives. Those long ago times when our whole vocabulary may have been different, and it’s meaning something other than the obvious. Those lives shaped this one and gave us granite foundations to build it on. Lives we won’t squander. Lives we will wring out together for those waiting on us somewhere else.
1 Comment
Kristyn Garbacz
7/13/2018 04:51:06 am
I am proud to know you...hearing you read this was an honor and I am glad we can call you our friend. Can't wait till we can all get together again...still my goal to get all you in the same place one day. I promise to do what I can to make that happen.
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AuthorJust a Hairless Simian making his way through a world full of "More Evolved" Primates who cannot see that the Emperor is naked and that Rome is burning. Archives
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