Seizing the Gray
“Carpe Diem”, the professor’s voice whispered in my ear…”Carpe Diem, Carpe Diem” as I watched the crows that morning in the school parking lot, black against the graying day my life resembles. I sat in my car and waited for those words to penetrate me, for “seizing the day” is something I hadn’t done in quite some time.
The Church bell chimed 9:15 and class would begin sharply at 9:30. I had sat there for half an hour, and still, the concept of such a monumental truth seemed to escape me every time I came too close to grasping it. But I knew somehow, regardless of the fact time was racing me much as it usually does on a Tuesday morning, that this day would prove to be different than the others; I felt sure something exceptional awaited me right behind the gray illusion of a life gone wrong. I switched off the radio and took a long, warm sip of my coffee.
“If only my school had a secret Poet’s Society”, I thought to myself. I thought perhaps then I could find meaning in the roads I travel everyday and the shady spots I so habitually linger in, smoking the last few drags of a stale cigarette before the Church chimes the hour and then…the same old thing: a painstaking lecture on the trivial issues the world faces today and a bunch of giggling, robotic schoolgirls who don’t know the difference between Italy and the Stone Age. “Where have all those wasted years on education gone?” I asked myself through the “snap, crackle, pop” of beaks breaking through fallen nuts on the asphalt.
That exuberant professor had it right: “Carpe Diem”. If the giggling, robotic schoolgirl had been introduced to this notion before the terminal grasp of college and the deceiving appeals of corporate America, she would have turned out differently. She would certainly know, for instance, the difference between Italy and the Stone Age. She would even know, perhaps, the secrets of art and love, and the painful ripple of truth when it strikes the soul; she would know why poetry holds the power to raise the tides of the spirit, or why love is the only medicine and redemption in this decaying world… And simple things, like the scent of opportunity that lingers upon the break of morning or the taste of her teardrops when they mingle with wine…So many things she will never know that so few like me suffer to hold on to.
I checked my watch: 9:28. I wondered what “seizing the day” would look like on that particular morning. Would I get out of my car, head to class and speak up for once about how I really feel about the war in Iraq? Or would I turn the engine on, shift gears and drive off to the lake to sit in silence and solitude? And it was in the middle of this questioning that I felt a warmth on my face. I lifted my eyes and I saw ahead of me the blinding beam of sunlight through a rip in the gray mantle of the morning. It shone from under the church bell which right then chimed the hour.
“Ding, Dong! Ding Dong!” as the bell’s shadow swung left and right across my face, “Carpe Diem, Carpe Diem”. I turned the engine off, shifted gears, and drove out of the school parking lot, but not to visit the gray lake; I went home. I sat in the old familiar comfort of my wooden desk which had not felt the brush of my sleeve for months. I took pen and paper, and as the co-creator I used to think I was when young and unspoiled, I began to write again. I wrote about the crows “snap, crackle, popping” on the asphalt, and the schoolgirl who might never truly live…And here I am now, still scrawling in zeal like the young men of the Dead Poet’s Society congregating in the Indian Cave, seizing the day; seizing the gray.
If I die tomorrow and all that is left of me is a name that once was and dusty photographs framed on a mantle piece…at least I’ve written about that gray day in September; that moment of time gone in the blink of an eye, now immortalized.
“That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse”, the Professor tells me, and though I have done just that…Though I have silenced the thunder that rose in my soul, my fingers won’t cease their shaking.
The Church bell chimed 9:15 and class would begin sharply at 9:30. I had sat there for half an hour, and still, the concept of such a monumental truth seemed to escape me every time I came too close to grasping it. But I knew somehow, regardless of the fact time was racing me much as it usually does on a Tuesday morning, that this day would prove to be different than the others; I felt sure something exceptional awaited me right behind the gray illusion of a life gone wrong. I switched off the radio and took a long, warm sip of my coffee.
“If only my school had a secret Poet’s Society”, I thought to myself. I thought perhaps then I could find meaning in the roads I travel everyday and the shady spots I so habitually linger in, smoking the last few drags of a stale cigarette before the Church chimes the hour and then…the same old thing: a painstaking lecture on the trivial issues the world faces today and a bunch of giggling, robotic schoolgirls who don’t know the difference between Italy and the Stone Age. “Where have all those wasted years on education gone?” I asked myself through the “snap, crackle, pop” of beaks breaking through fallen nuts on the asphalt.
That exuberant professor had it right: “Carpe Diem”. If the giggling, robotic schoolgirl had been introduced to this notion before the terminal grasp of college and the deceiving appeals of corporate America, she would have turned out differently. She would certainly know, for instance, the difference between Italy and the Stone Age. She would even know, perhaps, the secrets of art and love, and the painful ripple of truth when it strikes the soul; she would know why poetry holds the power to raise the tides of the spirit, or why love is the only medicine and redemption in this decaying world… And simple things, like the scent of opportunity that lingers upon the break of morning or the taste of her teardrops when they mingle with wine…So many things she will never know that so few like me suffer to hold on to.
I checked my watch: 9:28. I wondered what “seizing the day” would look like on that particular morning. Would I get out of my car, head to class and speak up for once about how I really feel about the war in Iraq? Or would I turn the engine on, shift gears and drive off to the lake to sit in silence and solitude? And it was in the middle of this questioning that I felt a warmth on my face. I lifted my eyes and I saw ahead of me the blinding beam of sunlight through a rip in the gray mantle of the morning. It shone from under the church bell which right then chimed the hour.
“Ding, Dong! Ding Dong!” as the bell’s shadow swung left and right across my face, “Carpe Diem, Carpe Diem”. I turned the engine off, shifted gears, and drove out of the school parking lot, but not to visit the gray lake; I went home. I sat in the old familiar comfort of my wooden desk which had not felt the brush of my sleeve for months. I took pen and paper, and as the co-creator I used to think I was when young and unspoiled, I began to write again. I wrote about the crows “snap, crackle, popping” on the asphalt, and the schoolgirl who might never truly live…And here I am now, still scrawling in zeal like the young men of the Dead Poet’s Society congregating in the Indian Cave, seizing the day; seizing the gray.
If I die tomorrow and all that is left of me is a name that once was and dusty photographs framed on a mantle piece…at least I’ve written about that gray day in September; that moment of time gone in the blink of an eye, now immortalized.
“That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse”, the Professor tells me, and though I have done just that…Though I have silenced the thunder that rose in my soul, my fingers won’t cease their shaking.