idioms of craigslist

When I moved out of Boulder for good, I sold nearly all of my furniture on craigslist.  Having come to settle down again, I had to slowly replace what was sold off, piece-by-piece.  From this, I got into the habit of checking craigslist daily for things I think I might need, or things I once had, need no longer, but am hankering for like momma's home cooking.  Not that I hanker for my mother's cooking, come to think of it, but the nostalgia feels like a craving.

Anyhow, I have noticed a great many particularities to a variety of craigslist postings that are in their frequency of appearance worthy of the class designation idiom. 

Since I continue to notice them and no one else has cataloged these commonplace creatures, I will.  Here now are all I can think of at the moment, to be followed by future additions and updates.

• The Sideways Picture: a poster skips the most basic, simple, and sometimes web-driven option to edit their digital photos, and opts to post a sideways-yet-shrunken digipic as an attachment.
• The Irrelevant Picture: including a picture that is not a picture of the item for sale, just to get past the "has image" Search filter
• The Ikea Picture: post an catalog image from the Ikea site, rather than a picture of the actual, used, and usually somewhat damaged item.
• ALL CAPS with too little or too much information (but missing the vital contact info).  Either way, painful to read.
• Attention-getting but not-informative titles like: Stuff! * ???Available! *** RIGHT **** now! FrEe DeLiVeRy!!!!! ***!*!*!**!*!*
• Listing a price of $1 (or no price) to avoid the price filters in search, and posting the price in the title. This is most often done by dealers.
• Free: big, bulky, ugly, damaged, broken-beyond-repair, stained, soiled, and desecrated items that the owner hopes to not have to pay a service to haul away

I really enjoy misspellings, but few are as memorable as "rot iron" or "rod iron" when "wrought iron" was intended.  And rarely is it actual wrought iron, but is instead is black-painted tubing of the round or square variety.

Start Where You Are

You're good enough as you are.

I know, I know, it's so hard to believe that when so little around you serves to reinforce your basic goodness.

You're getting older, five years in the high mountain air of Colorado did nothing good for your skin, so you're wrinkling, despite a daily regimen of toning spray, moisturizers, lotions, and night creams. The grays in your hair grow more numerous than the number of minutes you spend on the cushion each day. Your body complains more than it used to of the hours confined to a cubicle. The pounds don't come off as easily as they are put on.

Although you're not entirely alone in your distance from the sweet scent of dry pine needles and the cooling shadow of the Flatirons, you're alone in your day, working with a capitalistic focus on achievement, accomplishment, income, and customer satisfaction. Your humanness is valued only to the extent that you get the job satisfactorily done. Your coworkers, although kind and quite likable, all maintain a pleasant veneer; cracks in the cheerful facade are best hidden in the privacy of staring at our respective computer screens.  So you take your breaks for a well-deserved bout of earthy revival and receive only odd looks and suspicion from the other corporate cubicle veal for the amount of time you spend staring into the purple depths of a desert flower as it is visited by several bees.

But there it is still, your basic goodness.  Perhaps the human realm is too driven, too deva-realm, to give you the nourishing you once had, but there is still the earth, the growing things, the brittle smell of desert dust, the skittering lizard, the droning fuzzy bees. The earth and her many animal and plant denizens ignore you in a way that leaves so much space for you to be, where the ignoring of and by your fellow humans leaves you feeling lacking, wanting, judged and judging.

Step out into that clear, clean space of even the tiniest patch of grass in your corporate business park and breathe in a moment of nature's nonchalance. Be you ignored or feared, there's little ambiguity in your relationship to the natural world. You are of it, no matter what human artifice surrounds you and fills your day.

Your basic goodness is there, like the sun on your skin. Like the breeze lifting the faint hairs of your forearms. Like the sound of planes, of traffic, of birds. Your every sensation reminds you of your basic goodness.

Pay attention.