“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could." -Ralph Emerson
That is a lovely thought. I remain unconvinced. The older I get, the less hours there are in the day and the longer it takes me to do things; or maybe it's that my list of things to do grows longer. The length of this list may be directly proportional to my level of dishappiness. Not that I don't want things to do, I do. I make them myself, actually. I simply find at the end of the day that my day is over again, and I spent an enormous portion of it doing things to help other people's business/vision/etc. and had no time to work on my act or set up a gig for myself in Asheville/Charlotte/Lousiana this summer. This isn't a new realization. It's not even violent, because at least some part of everything I do exist or began out of love and desire. That remains well. But there is a quiet knowing that enters the room and smiles so kindly at me, taking a seat in the corner to wait.
Or maybe this is all just because I spent 10 hours today on a promotional video shoot for the Warped Tour 09. Ze set:
This was many levels of delight, but I still came home feeling like I was waiting for tomorrow to get back to my life, because I couldn't go train or work, and usually I can do both and still get to play with my beloved Vau de Vire wenches.
"You can't have your cake and eat it too."
I've always thought that was the stupidest thing I ever heard.
I realized recently that this absurdity of a phrase came from an older notion of 'have' where 'have' meant something more like 'to posess' rather than 'to consume'. It translates to something more like 'you can't keep your cake and eat it, too' these days. Jhonen Vazquez illustrates this very adorably with GIR's complicated relationship with its cupcake.
ReplyDeleteI feel like it parallels the shift in meaning of 'want' from 'to be without' to its modern meaning of 'to desire'.
All that being said, perhaps you can't keep your cake and eat it too. But you can always have more cake...