Academic

Ice Cream Cakes Equal Love

By Dan Filler

No, this isn't a law post or one about ice cream cakes, per se.  Rather, it's about a beautiful Wednesday night and my own love for found objects - or in this case, found language.  One of the great virtues of my current job is its location.  Drexel is less than a mile from Center City Philadelphia and two blocks from the very Ivy campus at Penn.  It was there, by the Van Pelt Library, that I found myself spending twenty minutes channeling college.  Students were milling about, debating whether to hit the books or head directly to Quizzo.  Couples were strolling by, holding hands, laughing.  A lone individual here and there was enjoying a cigarette.  And all around me I heard people chatting.  And as one of those talkers passed me, on a cell phone, she left a single phrase in her wake: "Ice Cream Cakes Equal Love."

That was her gift to me - a snippet of the English language.  My own Duchamp readymade.  What could she have meant?  Was she discussing birthday cake choices, agreeing with a confidante that her loving boyfriend had made a telling choice?  Was she explaining her own decision to forgo the usual Duncan Hines (or was it Betty Crocker?) and instead shell out for the Carvel?  Or is there a more obscure explanation? I'll never know, and am left to project my own meaning on the words.

Perhaps I needn't even do that.  TM charges good money for a mantra - for the which the main required trait is its inscrutability.  Now I can sit quietly under the elms and ponder my ice cream phrase for hours.

Once upon a time, I would have tried to transform the phrase into a short story.  Today, though, it will have to stand on its own two feet.  A piece of art all on its own.  A readymade. 

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on April 23, 2008 (boomark / email).