I used to wander around the University of Iowa campus at night on occasion. I was an 18-year-old freshman and lived on the third floor of one of the twin towers, near the old fieldhouse. This was a while ago. Let’s just say pre-21st Century.
Image courtesy Todd Adamson. Footbridge surviving the flood.
More than once my wanderings led me to cross a footbridge, which still spans the Iowa River near the Memorial Union. One dark night, some writing on the railing caught my eye. In my memory, which may be faulty in some details, the words stretched across much of the length of the bridge. One or more students – I’m guessing liberal arts types – had taken a good bit of care.
One graffito was a quote from a work by Albert Camus:
“One thinks differently about the same thing in the morning and in the evening. But where is truth, in the night thought or in the spirit of midday? Two replies, two races of men.”
It has certainly been true in my experience that what is hugely important and traumatic of an evening can become a trifle by morning.
The other scrawl is one whose author and source I have never been able to identify. It was attributed simply to “The Bridge.”
It said:
“Span only what you can in one day. Night is for the rest.”
I suppose it could be from the same Camus work, or maybe it came from the mind of some clever student with a knack for literary puns. If you know, please tell me.
Actually, don’t tell me. Let me wonder.
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The Camus quote was posted on our kitchen bulletin board in my child hood home, typewritten on a small nicotine stained curled piece of paper like something that came out of a fortune cookie, it remained pinned there for many years with many holes. I have been searching for it long before that guy invented the internet. This evening a brief google search failed to find it among a collection of Camus quotes at BrainyQuote. As I refined my search I landed here. Does it get any nicer than this? What is a blog anyway?
I suspect those are rhetorical questions, but … a blog sometimes turns out to be a place where you are reminded of things you’d long since forgotten. That piece of paper likely came out of my typewriter, Brother Martin. Great description.
Did you really just wind up on my blog by searching for a Camus quote? Nice, yes. I’m sure there is a better word for that sort of thing, but it seems to be beyond my reach just now. Maybe: Wow.