Reading someone’s written words — in the media, in books and song lyrics — I’m sometimes thinking… ‘Shit, that’s really good! That’s great writing!’
‘Shit’ can be a nice – not a nasty – exclamatory word.
In A Gambling Man, a David Baldacci novel, I just started reading, a lady and a guy are discussing Hollywood movies.
“Life is tough,” he says, and she says… “You go to the movies to get away from that for a little bit.” To “get some pixie dust thrown on you for a precious two hours.” She’s hoping to be a Hollywood actress.
Imagining pixie dust, sprinkling down, in a story about two people, just trying to get by… that just got to me.
It’s funny how communication works.
As relatives and friends rediscover one another, this holiday season, since, with travel picking up, there will be more in-person get-togethers… maybe, like me, you’re wondering how — in this cockamamie state of polarization, we’re stuck in — it’ll all turn out.
Will folks be talking with each other? Or will they be talking at each other?
The funny thing with communication is the simplicity of its meaning. It’s an interchange of ideas, with ‘interchange’ meaning: mutually giving and receiving.
If folks go about communicating, as the word is defined, what a holiday blessing that would be! It would be like having some of that “pixie dust,” in the book I’m reading, “thrown on” relatives and friends, everywhere.
And, while we’re talking about communication, we should also be talking about ‘conversing’ and ‘confabbing,’ two words that are in the communication family, so to speak. When you’re engaging in an exchange of thoughts and feelings – preferably in a calm, civilized manner – you, and your relatives and friends, are conversing. And you’re confabbing, when you’re talking casually.
They’re like pixie dust, in a way… those three related words, all suggesting thoughtful, mutual, even casual talk among folks… when they’re together for the holidays, or talking over the backyard fence, or communicating, conversing or confabbing almost anywhere, any old time.
I’ve been wondering if Congressman James Clyburn had the three words in mind, when a journalist asked him — “What’s next?” — shortly after Congress passed the social spending bill, last week.
Congressman Clyburn said the bill would go on to the Senate, where they’ll have their ideas… maybe some better ideas, I recall him saying.
“Maybe some better ideas…”
Shit, those four words make a whole lot of sense, in this cockamamie polarization spin we’re in.
I’d guess that Congressman Clyburn, who came to Congress in 1993, has seen Republicans, Democrats and independents communicating, conferring and confabbing enough, to get some things done, and to even come up with some better ideas.
Now, if relatives and friends can just do the same thing…
Shit, what a holiday that’ll be!
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