Evarysyn

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

salad days

Direct from some googled website:

Salad days

Meaning

The days of one's youthful inexperience.

Origin

From Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra:

CLEOPATRA: My salad days,
When I was green in judgment: cold in blood,
To say as I said then! But, come, away;
Get me ink and paper:
He shall have every day a several greeting,
Or I'll unpeople Egypt.

The phrase is often used these days to mean the days of carefree innocence and pleasure of our youth. It has also been used to refer to our time of material affluence in our more mature years, when the pressures of life have begun to ease - something akin to 'the golden years'.

That's not what Shakespeare meant though, and the clue is in the colour - not golden but green. While he used green to signify jealousy - 'the green-eyed monster', it is used here to mean immature. So, salad days are green (immature) days.

Hmm. Anyway. I thought of it as I was reading my friend's blog; Keegan, linked; and he talked about shopping. Which he used to hate. Which resulted in my budget for birthday presents doubling, most of the time :P But anyway. I got curious, never having figured out why that phrase is so often used - and so inexplicably, but I think half the time it's misused?

At first, I thought it meant the days of being force-fed greens by mum. So referring one to the days of youthful innocence and distaste of what "is good for you".

Then, that it would be irrelevant now...I know loads of ladies who feed themselves that stuff, to lose weight, keep themselves at a certain weight level, detox (???), clear their complexions(one drinks bittergourd juice EVERY MORNING), and other such worthy, weighty reasons related to well-being.

Then that it was maybe related to a more enlightened time, when we did not kill cute little rabbits and cuddly chicks and darling dumb cows to sate our awful need for blood and meat. Read someplace that vegetarianism would still be vegetarianism even if veggies had minds and souls cuz it would still be the most energy efficient way for us to gain our fuel. Short of turning the iron in our haemoglobin in our blood to magnesium like the leaves have I don't see a more effiecient way myself. Though I would honestly rather die than destroy another soul. My life is not worth the poor darling's...

[Chlorophyll is similar in structure to haemoglobin, but with magnesium instead of iron as the reactive part of the molecule.]

Then, that I have an cable modem. I think. Technologically impaired. Don't blame me. It's in the genes...daddy can't turn on his computer without help.

So I searched it, and there you have it. Who knew Shakespeare was that influential? And not misinterpreted. Half the time. Anyway.

G'nite.
Eve.

Yet another ring on the tree at9:27 PM

Evarysyn

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Evarysyn

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This is MY blog. But you can read it.