This is not a cryptic post, or at least it is not intended to be.
Maybe this is an off-shoot from what I do for work, but if I can’t produce something for the masses, then it shouldn’t even be there in the first place.
At least that is what I would like to think.
I was just thinking the other day about how nice it would be if I could just see the good in everybody, or even enjoy the hope and promise of a new day. But I wonder if I lost all my optimism when I left Australia and I wonder if it is this place that has made me a pessimist or I was simply always one.
Anyway, I found this poem while on my random surfing on the Internet and something in it touched me.
Cacoethes Scribendi
If all the trees in all the woods were men;
And each and every blade of grass a pen;
If every leaf on every shrub and tree
Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea
Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes
Had nothing else to do but act as scribes,
And for ten thousand ages, day and night,
The human race should write, and write, and write,
Till all the pens and paper were used up,
And the huge inkstand was an empty cup,
Still would the scribblers clustered round its brink
Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
(1809-1894)
cacoethes scribendi is a Latin phrase. It means the ungovernable, insatiable urge to write and can also be interpreted as the latinization of the Greek, kakos, meaning bad and ethes, meaning character or disposition.
But since my knowledge of Latin is limited to the ‘Pater Noster’ and ‘Agnus Dei’, I really should stop now.
