Note: Apologies for the day-late appearance of this post.
[Image: places in New Jersey I visited — or wish I could have — over the last week. The gold stars indicate places where I worked at one time or another; the regular place markers, green and blue, are those spots where I (green) and/or others critically important to me (blue) live(d). I can’t promise I didn’t miss somebody!]
From whiskey river:
“Carpe diem” doesn’t mean seize the day—it means something gentler and more sensible. “Carpe diem” means pluck the day. Carpe, pluck. Seize the day would be “cape diem,” if my school Latin serves. No R. Very different piece of advice.
What Horace had in mind was that you should gently pull on the day’s stem, as if it were, say, a wildflower or an olive, holding it with all the practiced care of your thumb and the side of your finger, which knows how to not crush easily crushed things… Pluck the cranberry or blueberry of the day tenderly free without damaging it, is what Horace meant—pick the day, harvest the day, reap the day, mow the day, forage the day. Don’t freaking grab the day in your fist like a burger at a fairground and take a big chomping bite out of it.
(Nicholson Baker [source])
…and:
34.
(excerpt)Sometimes you are privileged with a glimpse of the other world,
when the light shines up from the west as the sun sets and dazzles
something wet. The world is just water and light, a slide show
through which your spirit glides.
(Fanny Howe [source])
…and:
You’ll notice that I haven’t talked about love. Or about happiness. I’ve talked about becoming—or remaining—the person who can be happy, a lot of the time, without thinking that being happy is what it’s all about. It’s not. It’s about becoming the largest, most inclusive, most responsive person you can be.
(Susan Sontag [source])
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