Light that candle! Wear that dress! Use that bath bomb! Eat that fruit! Spill the wine!

hello friendly reminder that you do not need a special occasion to use nice things! If you wait long enough your nice bath bomb won’t be as fizzy! your favorite fruits will go out of season! candles are meant to be burned, not looked at! you’re not enjoying your special tea if it’s just sitting in your cupboard! you’re allowed to have nice and special things on completely ordinary days! heck, it might just make that day special

(these words are from someone who goes by the handle “mysteryhacked”; you can follow them on some platform but I’m not sure what the platform is; doesn’t appear to be Facebook or Twitter — someone shared it as a screenshot on Facebook which is how I saw it)

And I say: YES!!! THIS. I love using my grandmother’s china for my everyday dishes. And spending beautiful evenings lit by nice candles that I bought from the thrift store for 50 cents or a dollar because the person who bought them 10 years ago at a boutique for 15 dollars never used them (they were “too pretty to burn”), and then later the person died or had to downsize and so that too-pretty-to-burn candle ended up in a thrift shop.

Long ago (around 1998), I had a beautiful jacket that I kept saving for special occasions. Over the years of me saving it for some special occasion that never arrived, the beautiful jacket got ruined by mildew. So I know whereof I speak!

And on this general carpe-diemish topic, one of my favorite ancient poems just came to me. It’s from the Odes, a collection of Latin lyric poems by Horace (65 BC- 8 BC). I no longer have the magazine clipping or whatever that I had taped to the cabinets of my trailer back in Austin 20 years ago, but I have read the poem so many times I can (mostly) remember what that text said. Note, a google will reveal various versions of the translation, none of which quite feel as rhythmically satisfying to me as the version I memorized all those years ago, and have (with errors no doubt) retyped below for you:

Seek not to know — we cannot know — what ends, the gods will bring, my love, to you or me.
Consult no Babylonian astrologers! 
Far better to endure whatever comes, whether Jove grant us many winters more, or whether this be the last, that now wears out
the Tuscan sea upon opposing rocks.
Be wise. Strain clear the wine. Since life is brief, cut short far-distant hopes.
Even while we speak, time, envious, takes flight. 
Live this day well.
Put little trust in what tomorrows hold.