A Little Madness in the Spring

I recently ran across a balding fellow, probably in his early forties, wearing a grey too-snug tee-shirt that read “Every Day Is a Good Day.” Of course, I get the subtext: life is miraculous on the cosmic impersonal plane – the nighttime sky, as Hamlet put it, a “brave o’erhanging firmament, [a] majestical roof fretted with golden fire,” not to mention down below “the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.” We should be thankful for the chain of events that gave rise to a consciousness that allows us to appreciate and contemplate these wonders around us. The subtext of the subtext is that this wonderfulness is the handiwork of a benevolent deity. Every day is a good day because it’s a colorful shard in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of a creator god’s abracadabra. 

But, as we all know, a day’s goodness or badness depends on an individual’s experience during that 24-hour period. For example, at Chico Feo I just heard a horrific account of a traffic fatality that happened on Folly Beach last night. A car crammed with six drunks doing 65 in a 25-zone barreled into a golf cart driven, as the story was told to me, by a woman who had just gotten married that very day on the island.^[1]

So, I might suggest, that the tee shirt’s message be edited: “For me, every day is a good day” instead.

And print this on the back.

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown —
Who ponders this tremendous scene —
This whole Experiment of Green —
As if it were his own!

                                    Emily Dickinson

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^[1] The fellow who related the story said she was in her bridal gown.