I subscribe to a certain Lucy Van Pelt type of psychology, a belief that “carpe diem” is really more than enough to go on, in fact, it’s almost all you need to know about getting by in the world. It’s served me well enough, but at times, it falls just short. The day has been seized, tightly and by the throat, and perhaps throttled a little for good measure, but the heart is somehow left out of the process.
When the day you are attempting to seize insists on skittering away across time zones, how can you ever grab hold of it? And even if you have it, if your feet are in, oh, Seattle, and the globe starts to spin away from you towards, let’s say Vienna, there is no way your arms are long enough to keep your feet where you want them to be. You will have to let go by the time you reach the Eastern seaboard or you will get very, very, sore. Your feet will be dragged across the peaks of the Rockies, your shins all marked up by the pointy Continental Divide, your belly scraped on the corrugated metal grain elevators of the plains. It really hurts when you hit your chin on the Eiffel Tower. Don’t even get me started on the Atlantic crossing. And anyway, who can reach that far?
Carpe deim doesn’t make it possible for you to be in two places at once, either. It can’t magically make you able to browse the shelves the local public library while you are also off to some farm festival to find out what makes for a handsome sheep. You cannot eat Ethiopian food, seated on the outdoor patio surrounded by African accents, sopping up the curry with that odd spongy bread while also having kaffee und kuchen in a tiny jewel box bakery where the ladies are wearing fur hats. One of you can not have the cake while the other eats it. Carpe deim is all fine and well, but then you get to the point where there’s no cake.
Maybe I’m looking for a sort of “seize the cake” ideology. I’m flustered because not only don’t I know the word for cake in Latin, but seizing cake makes a big mess all over the place, though I guess you could lick the whole sweet disaster off your fingers. It has a certain sexiness to it, seize the cake, but also the cake is ruined.
It’s Independence Day. There is a surplus of independence, but very little cake.
Exactly. *sigh*
Can we not talk about “handsome sheep” and does anyone………… still wear………….. a hat?
I’ll drink to that!
Happy Fourth O’ July!
VV
Hey Nerd:
Our situations–although different–are uncomfortably rich in parallels.
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be expats.
Sal
PS1: Your email address is rejecting messages today, for some reason.
PS2: Ordered my Flea this morning.
:-O
Momma don’t let yer babies grow up to be expats.
Don’t let ’em learn languages, jump on airplanes, don’t let ’em see Paris or or places unnamed.
Momma don’t let yer babies grow up to be expats.
They’ll never know home and forever they’ll roam looking for someplace they love.
@VV: The ladies of the Austrian coffee houses still wear hats. And in the winter, said hats are fur. And trust me, when the only novel thing you can find to do within a one hour drive is watch sheep judging, sheep judging you will watch. And you will find it amusing. That’s the scary part. Not that you’re going to watch sheep judging, but that you find it amusing.
From my vague recollections of mid-’70s high-school classes, I remember the Latin word for “cake,” but I don’t know that you will want to use it in this context:
placenta
So maybe “carpe panis” (“seize the loaf/bread”) might work better? Or perhaps the birds teach us something else, like “carpe nux” (“seize the nut?”)