encave

What is it about us that we think we are immune if immured? The world is big and full of variety, and help comes from others, but so does danger, and many of us, faced with the temptation of an overbuilt cocoon, cave in and encave in an enclave, urban (and suburban) troglodytes warming ourselves at the blue flicker of giant flat screens – the new silhouettes in our Platonic caves. It is so craven to cave in so, to crave encavement. In the yard perhaps is a sign signifying cave canem (‘beware of the dog’), the pooch positioned to protect us – forgetting as we do that in Goethe’s Faust the devil appears as a poodle – but our motto may as well be cave diem (‘beware the day’).

Do I overstate the case? Go into the newest neighbourhoods and see: vestigial yards fronting overinflated balloons of boards, bricks, and vinyl siding, a mere metre gap between one and the next, as if on compact archival shelving for house models. No life outdoors; even when you evacuate you encave: hop in your moving imperial shell to get to shopping or work, joining others to make a metal-and-glass bubble-wrap unrolled along the “free”way.

So we are encaved. It is a simple enough word: en ‘in’ and cave ‘cave’ (obviously) from Latin cavus ‘hollow’ as in concave and cavity. But look in two dictionaries and see two slightly different senses. In Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, it is, succinctly, “to hide in or as if in a cave.” In the Oxford English Dictionary, it is “To enclose or shut up in, or as in, a cave.” Both are shown as transitive: you do not encave, you encave yourself or someone else. Both allow an “as (if) in,” so I can say we are encaved and not add figuratively. But there is the difference between “hide” and “enclose or shut up.” You may be enclosed or shut up but not hidden (a glass cave?) and hidden but not enclosed or shut up (duck behind a rock?). The difference is in perspective and who is restrained. Is it that others are kept from seeing us, and we are free from their gaze? Or is it that we are kept from leaving, and others are free from our presence?

And can we easily tell which is which? And when one becomes the other?