To People Who Scale Walls

Hello . . . How are you: a greeting, nothing more, not an inquiry... Those words bounce off our guests like rubber balls upon a concrete wall... Echoing down the corridor... We don?t care that we lose them, we never truly noticed them leave. They were more of a reflex than anything else . . . And they weren?t really ours to begin with. We had no language when we were born, except that of body language. We had no words. Those were taught to us by the people and places which raised us. They made us learn the words, to express ourselves, to converse with the people and places around us, to better fit into this giant puzzle of a life as a somewhat rounder jigsaw piece. Perhaps if people were made of foam, flexible . . . Or perhaps if they were more like amebas, always changing and shifting in shape, they would not use words in the same way. Words are used to express boundaries. They are a tool of structure. People, with their pieces which must be in order and in their specific places if they are to make any sense at all of their rigid jigsaw lives need these words go give direction. But how hollow these words can be sometimes . . . How . . . EMPTY. The words we repeat time and time again are worn out like old socks which can offer our tired feet little warmth. People forget that these words have so much more potential. They take them for granted, simply tools to be used: saws to fashion the puzzle pieces, and glue to keep them together.
I should like to beg a bowl of warm soup from my unappreciated tongue. I should like to say and mean and feel with my words. I should like to find that I am heard and understood.
But hello . . . How are you? Then walk away, on with out another thought given . . . That?s all we can think to say . . .
My mind goes back to that moment now . . . And I wonder . . . This and that . . .
That wall is a tall structure . . . I place my hand upon it, and it is cold. The concrete is painted white . . . Once. Now standing in front of the wall you can see a collage of god knows how many years of graffiti . . . I think I?ll add my name to the others . . . Signed and dated in bold red letters.
It?s a unique delight one feels when one sees one?s own name in letters, like an odd kind of pride humans have for their ability to scale walls.