[person3]

Ok kids, today's poem is a favorite of mine that has been stuck in my head for a while (and something that last week was assigned to memorize in acting class), it is...

A Dream Deferred
by Langston Hughes (who writes in a way I seem to like)

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore
And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load

or does it just explode?

To me it means that you, I, everybody has dreams and desires and ambitions. No matter how much you involve yourself in someone else's live, no matter how much you tell yourself they are silly, no matter how much you just try to grow up and forget them, THE DESIRE is still there.

Something is inside you, and does it become twisted and stagnant? Or does it crystallize, frozen in time along with you? Or does it weigh you down or make you feel dried up?

Do you feel as if your life is coming to a dead end, you have lived the same life over and over again until it is rotten and there is nothing more you feel the world has to offer? Do you feel like there's nothing inside anymore, that it has dried up? Or maybe frozen in time?

These could be your dreams and desires.

I've thought about this somewhat for a while.

No matter how far I run away, there are always things that I want to do. Even if they aren't apparent, they are deep inside somewhere. Today I wanted to recite the poem out loud to practice for my acting class (well at least practice it in my home) but was embarrassed to...what if my family was home etc...but they weren't and it was something I had to do and I gave it a go.

But I think we're running away from our dreams. From what we want. From what we NEED.

We think it's silly, we're induced with guilt that we shouldn't want so much, we feel the smallest scream is insanity, we feel the slightest bit of acting out is wanting too much. But yet we implode...we can't do anything, go anywhere...and we further and further run down away from what we want, deciding it's stupid and we didn't really want it anyway and we start to hate it more and more because IT IS STILL THERE. But in a different form...our twisting of it has made it dry, rotten, sticky, infected...this infection we have in us, this disease we perceive we have is our own deferred dreams and desires! We are so afraid/ashamed of them that we become hateful of them and make them big scary things to be avoided and then twist them in our minds into symptoms.

But you can't run away from something too far. You start running away from your pesky little self and then bam look at the mess you're in. Well at least that's how i look at it.

But seriously....when do you feel most run down? I feel most run down when I can't say what I want to, and when I can't i start saying bitter things instead..because that want to express is still there, hidden, and it becomes denial...

oh yeah and my other thought for the day is when I make what i perceive to be bad choices I feel the symptoms coming on, and maybe this feeling that I'm collapsing or disintegrating is actually my WISH to disintegrate because I'm so mad at myself for making the "wrong" choice that I want to annihiliate myself since I can't change the past...

 

[person3]

You know, it's really only during those times I feel i made a bad choice that the symptoms come on...like i try to go in the past and change it...that's when my symptoms are up to things...

 

[person3]

Oh my god, like really. I mean i believe that's how it all started...when I ate something I didn't plan on eating or when I thought someone didn't like me...i would get super anxious...not that the food or the person did anything to me i just felt on such a set path

 

[person3]

no really i have better things to do than reply to my own post repeatedly....

 

[dalailama15]

It is the times when I remember a bad choice that I will frequently whisper to myself, hopefully only when I'm alone: "I really hate you you fuckin ass hole" that is, when the usual self contempt flares as real self hatred.

I hadn't really understood why this happens so quickly and powerfully. But yes, dreams deferred. Critical moments drifted through--bad choices with lasting consequences. It makes me feel hopeless. What dream will I defer today that will make me hate myself sometime in the future? Although this should, and perhaps will, create some motivation.

Still, I don't think these moments are particularly theraputic.

 

[dalailama15]

Interestingly, a poem that I memorized a long time ago has been going through my head for the last several days. It is about the exact opposite of the above sentiment, that is, about a memory that delivers, in a flash, joy instead of contempt. God I guess I'll remember it now (so don't quote me):

Wordsworth:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never ending line
Along the margin of a bay
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee.
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed and gazed but never thought
What wealth to me this show had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inner eye
Which is the bliss of solitude.
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils

That last stanza still knocks me out: I've spent many an hour lying on my couch in vacant or in pensive mood. Then the bit about the "inner eye" being the bliss of solitude, that is, the imagination as a powerful and positive force instead of a heckling pain in the ass. And that last couplet, out of nowhere, pulls together the whole force and meaning of the poem, and really, the force and meaning of Romanticism itself . . . and it's so simple and so pretty.

anyway

 

[dalailama15]

when I ate something I didn't plan on eating or when I thought someone didn't like me...i would get super anxious

The memory of a bad moment can recreate the original emotion: anxiety. But Wordsworth stores a joyful moment, to retrieve later, to recreate joy.

This seems a little more theraputic

(and see you're not the only one who can respond to your own post)

 

[dalailama15]

One more thing I just remembered from some freshman english class, a story that may or may not be true: . Wordsworth's original opening was: I wandered lonely as a cow. . . -- His sister suggested a better start.