Carpe Diem

A solitary leaf breaks loose from the branch of a tree that holds it secure. Slowly it floats down from its home cathedraled in the sky and rests briefly on the side of the hill below before the wind soon nudges it on its journey again. The hill is blanketed with the deep green grass of a dwindling summer, and cracked sidewalks, littered with the first dying leaves of fall, meander in three different directions up and down the steep slope while meeting conveniently within a white gazebo. The gazebo is like a quaint jewel gracing the regal hillside where it is anchored as solidly as the tall brick classroom beside it, enduring the incessant ebb and flow of generations of students.

Strangely enough, the little structure rarely captures the interest of the students that wander through it to class, forever hurried and forever tired. Instead, it is often seized in the late night hours when the dorm windows glow and belch music and the town below sparkles with an electric brilliance. Regularly subject to disruptions in the still night, the gazebo's insides shake and quiver under the weight of inebriated souls that fill their lungs and the cold night air with the taunting songs of Greek sisterhood and brotherhood.

Otherwise, students briefly regard the little structure as they fall into the semester's routine that inevitably becomes mundane. They take the same sidewalk to class and to dinner. They sit under the same tree when the weather turns warm in spring, or choose to sprawl lazily on the grass in the plaza outside the library to witness the sudden reawakening of the campus. The gazebo feeds the hungry camera of a proud parent and is an ornament to the student's eye.

From my dorm window my gaze is often drawn to it, and when I lift the shade in the mornings it greets me bathed in morning light. One afternoon, I was routinely observing the fair spectacle while readying myself for work and realized I had never really taken the time to pause within it and look around to see how the diminutively independent structure views the campus. The chapel was striking four and I hurriedly took a detour from my usual path to the building on campus where I worked, and followed the sidewalk that led from the dorm to the gazebo with a dried leaf as a companion that hopped and skipped with the breeze. A cold rain began to fall but when I reached the circular shelter, the sturdy roof of smooth white wood and gray slate kept me dry. I stood directly in the middle of the little house, where below my feet there was engraved in the concrete the words--Carpe Diem. Turning around and around, I viewed the campus from all directions, first looking below me, to the bottom of the hill. Cars lined the highway leading the work world home to dinner and the town lights began to illuminate the paling blue sky. I looked at the dorms and their slew of windows, some were open and shaded by curtains, others empty and closed, and one or two brandished a fraternity banner from the sill. Professors slowly left the classroom building a few yards away with briefcases in hand, having finished feeding and coaxing knowledge for the day. Then I gazed up the climbing slope to the chapel steeple that strives for the heavens, and to a flock of geese bound for a destination in a determined V in the sky.

I looked around a moment more and realized time was pushing on and that I would be late. So I chose a path and wandered out into the fall rain and moved with the wind that guided me up the hill. I had done that afternoon what below my feet the gazebo had told me to do. I had seized the moment but would forget it later on, caught up in chapters to read and papers to write and parties on the weekends. But I would be reminded of the stolen moment when I would look down at the gazebo in the mornings, and listen to the songs sung within it, and glimpse it captured in my picture album, and I would remember the view.