I received another meme on another website this morning, this one was all about dreams. I opted not to do it, however.
I really don't have any dreams, any longer. Which seems strange to me, I supppose, 'cos as a child--and even as a teenager, I was always a bit of a dreamer.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: "In dreams we are true poets; we create the persons of the drama; we give the appropriate figures, faces, costurme; they are perfect in their organs, attitude, manners: moreover they speak after their own characters, not ours--they speak to us, and we listen with surprise to what they say.
Indeed, I doubt if the best poet has yet written any five act play that can compare in thoroughness of invention with this unwritten play in fifty acts, composed by the dullest snorer in the watch-house."
Our dreams can both transport us to places we long to be, and take us away from places we wish we could run away from.
Certainly at times in my life, the play that had been my dreams had not only fifty acts, but a circus performance thrown in as well...because, as a child, no one wants to tell you that your dreams aren't practical or unrealistic, or that you, or society, or life itself, may have limitations that would make your dreams virtually impossible. In childhood dreams, anything is possible--and therein lies the wonder.
And certainly, I have gone for my dreams, more than once. I grew up loving horses, and often worked with them--even went to college to study horsemanship, when I was 18/19 years old--but, then found that physically it was not something I was adept at, partly due to, I suspect now--at the time I didn't know, 'cos my dad forbade my mum from ever telling me--partly I think my limitations in becoming a good rider was from the DCD--developmental co-ordination disorder, or maybe even the dyscalculia, I don't know--but everything was always a struggle for me, no matter how hard I tried or desired to be better. Oh, I could ride--but not as well as my classmates, despite the fact that I was giving it 110%, every time I stepped into the stirrup. Also, truth to tell--and this is hard for me to admit publicly, even now--even though a love being around and working with them...I'm a wee afraid of horses. I reckon that's a bit like an actress who adores life on the stage, admitting that she's a afraid to act.
I dreamed about living in the country, and for a while, I sort of did, and it was glorious...but had its downsides, which of coure, in the dreams of your mind, you don't ever see---especially the part of having to shovel out your drive under 2 feet of wet heavy snow, at 5am in the morning. Not a very jolly experience, that. Nor having a whopping huge pine branch break under heavy snow, and come crashing through your bedroom ceiling--right over your bed, at 3am on a winter morning. Nor do you foresee in those dreams, that your neighbour across the street will have a rooster, who likes to crow at the top of its lungs at 3:45 am on an early summer morning. Life in the country can have its downsides.
When I'd finally made up my mind in autumn of 1998, to go back to college, and had my application finally accepted in summer of 1999, I was both nervous and excited. My life had come--pretty much as it has now, to a dead stop...and like now, I wasn't comfortable with that. Besides dreaming of being a horse woman, since the time I was in my early teens, I'd also had a "secret" dream--one which I thought so impossible (like my other "secret" dream of working as a radio presenter), I never mentioned to anyone, and never once even considered as a very real possibility: I wanted to be a writer. I suspect mum knew this, but I never once openly discussed it with her. For one thing, then, as now, I simply did not--and do not--believe that I have what it takes to be in demand as a writer..and even then, I knew that a writer had to have a special something--a spark, talent, call it what you will, and I sincerely felt that I had not that gift. You see, I wanted to be a creative writer--and my skills just never leant that way.
Even as I finally revealed my intentions to my mum, at the tender age of 39, to go back to college to be a writer, mum told me that I'd probably make a good magazine writer. Even she, who always, always encouraged me to follow my interests, even she knew, that I had no gift to write fiction or plays or what-have-you. So, I went back to school, found myself enrolled in theater courses...which was totally unexpected..and later proved quite helpful in real life. And, I began taking all sorts of writing courses which I thought might be helpful to me: from research papers and presentations, to essays, poetry and plays, to more practical things like public relations, journalism, broadcast writing, and technical writing. I worked hard at it, because I desperately wanted to make a better life for myself, I knew that if I didn't take a flyer on this "secret" dream of mine that I'd had for the past 3 decades, that my dream I'd hidden away all those years, was then nothing but worthless dross--and also, I simply didn't want to be trapped in a dead-end job which I didn't like, for the rest of my days...
...and, I try so hard--harder than you could know, not to be bitter about it, and just to shrug it off and learn to live with it--but, truthfullly, could have saved myself $60,000 in finacial aid bills, if I'd just stayed home and rotted, 'cos guess where I am now? And, worse off than I was in 1999, and all my writing is just rubbish fan-fiction, dull plodding plays and mundane blog posts like this one.
The dream died. It's dead, it's gone, and I don't even feel sorry about it..a wee sad, perhaps. I buried it this past winter...and maybe buried a part of me, as well, I don't know. I've touched my dreams from time to time, but somehow, they've always slipped through my fingers, leaving me feeling adrift, and..okay, and a bit like a loser, at times.
Still, I suppose there must still be dreams inside of me...a play as yet un-thought of, and unwritten...maybe some day, I shall find it.
