I Love You, Tomorrow

By John Hertz:  I don’t mean this one despite Otto Binder and even Virgil Finlay.

Last spring I put here something I called Et in Arcadia Ego, Latin for “And [even] in Arcadia, I am.”

In the study of classical Greek and Roman art that’s a famous tag, signifying “We human beings may find ourselves facing Death even in what seems a place of carefree pleasure.”  About what that in turn signifies, opinions differ.

I brought it, in my opinion-differing way, for a pointer to an element of S-F appearing where it might be a surprise if it hadn’t been elemental.

Here’s another.

A man I know oddly collects (I mean, I know him oddly, but thinking about it he collects oddly too) Elizabethan courtly riddles, not in a Bet-you-can’t-guess-this way but as a kind of poetical pastime, whether actually documented in history or merely in that style.  Someone gave him this one.  I’ve been trying to trace it.

I never was, but always shall be.
No one has seen me, nor ever will.
Yet I have the confidence of all
Who live and breathe
On this terrestrial ball.

As you saw from my title above, it’s Tomorrow.

Pretty.

And, I realized, if I may adopt the phrase, one of us.

Some citizen of Electronicland showed me this link. Neither complete nor conclusive, but the best I’ve found.

One thought on “I Love You, Tomorrow

  1. What a lovely prayer. As a person who is interested in Buddhism and mindfulness, it sang to me. Remember the now. It will never be again.

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