dry grass singing

deopan shitan

In my first year of university, i was forced to study Anglo-Saxon poetry - 'The Wanderer', 'The Seafarer', 'The Dream of the Rood'. Of all this, i remember nothing except the Anglo-Saxon word for 'deep': deopan. And the only reason i remember this is because of the panic i felt in the week prior to my first-year exams, when i realised that the combination of too-much-partying and too-much-mooning-around had left me sinking in the academic equivalent of a stinking cesspit. That was when i coined the phrase, 'deopan shitan' - dog-Anglo-Saxon for 'deep shit'.

Talking to a friend yesterday, i suddenly recalled this phrase, together with another scatalogical term i use to describe my theory on why unhappiness cannot be measured, and why all unhappy people feel they must be the unhappiest people on earth, regardless of the nature or scale of their problems. The theory is based on the metaphor of being stuck in a 'piece'a shit' (for maximum effect, this phrase should be muttered, slowly and with feeling emphasis, in a deep bass voice): When you're in a piece'a shit, all you can see is shit, and you cannot tell how big the piece of shit really is. Only outsiders are able to compare the relative sizes of different pieces of shit and give you the necessary sense of perspective to deal with your problems.

To quantitatively assess the size of a piece of shit, to tell the sufferer exactly how big (or small) it is so that he will have a better idea of what needs to be done to extricate himself from it, and then to assist in the extrication process: that's what friends are for.

posted by eothen @ 8:40 PM