no one owns words
I wrote an amazing entry yesterday about throwing things away, but my blackberry lost it. Perhaps I'll recreate it some day, but not today. Yesterday I was throwing things away to make room for Kayla in my apartment and today the old bank statements and broken picture frames salvaged from the street and ticket stubs and post-it notes have all been hauled away by the trash men.
I am proud of myself, the packrat, who holds on to things after they have stopped being useful (if they were ever useful), for remembering that moving into someone else's established living space is hard. The transition from "mine" to "ours" involves cleaning out the closets and getting rid of piles of papers and finally trading in all those pennies I've been collecting from the street. I am throwing things away and I doubt I will miss any of it.
That was yesterday.
Today I'm thinking of private jokes and the created languages of groups. I'm thinking of how possessive I get of the in-jokes and how when I see something that was MINE that I shared with YOU being shared by all of your other friends, it bothers me. It shouldn't. Language is free, and anyway, I stole the joke or the phrase from HER or HIM, and it was OURS before it was OURS, if you know what I mean. And before that, the person I borrowed it from said, "... really?" and "like you shouldn't know from" and "obvi" to someone else who understood exactly what those phrases meant and lobbed the responses back as fast as lightning.
I'm less possessive of places. I take every person who stays in my house to Tiny Cup, the cafe I first fell in love with with Kim Vermillion last fall. And as much as I will always associate Kim with Tiny Cup, I don't hesitate to take new people there. Sharing the experience doesn't make the original any less OURS.
Language is different for me. A "your mom" joke is less tangible than a cup of tea at a particular table, but I don't mind if you eat cupcakes with someone else as long as you don't use our slang while you're doing it.
But when a relationship ends, I can't take back my inflection the way you took back your favorite sweater.
No one owns words.
Love,
Beth
I am proud of myself, the packrat, who holds on to things after they have stopped being useful (if they were ever useful), for remembering that moving into someone else's established living space is hard. The transition from "mine" to "ours" involves cleaning out the closets and getting rid of piles of papers and finally trading in all those pennies I've been collecting from the street. I am throwing things away and I doubt I will miss any of it.
That was yesterday.
Today I'm thinking of private jokes and the created languages of groups. I'm thinking of how possessive I get of the in-jokes and how when I see something that was MINE that I shared with YOU being shared by all of your other friends, it bothers me. It shouldn't. Language is free, and anyway, I stole the joke or the phrase from HER or HIM, and it was OURS before it was OURS, if you know what I mean. And before that, the person I borrowed it from said, "... really?" and "like you shouldn't know from" and "obvi" to someone else who understood exactly what those phrases meant and lobbed the responses back as fast as lightning.
I'm less possessive of places. I take every person who stays in my house to Tiny Cup, the cafe I first fell in love with with Kim Vermillion last fall. And as much as I will always associate Kim with Tiny Cup, I don't hesitate to take new people there. Sharing the experience doesn't make the original any less OURS.
Language is different for me. A "your mom" joke is less tangible than a cup of tea at a particular table, but I don't mind if you eat cupcakes with someone else as long as you don't use our slang while you're doing it.
But when a relationship ends, I can't take back my inflection the way you took back your favorite sweater.
No one owns words.
Love,
Beth