That this is the best time to dream

For, after the gospels,
After the human and divine comedies,
After the one thousand and one nights,
After crime and punishment,
War and peace, pride and prejudice,
The sound and the fury,
Between good and evil,
Being and nothingness,
After the tempest, the trial,
And the wasteland,
After things have fallen apart,
After the hundred years of solitude,
And the rememberance of things past,
In the kingdom of this world,
We can still astonish the gods in humanity
And be the stuff of legends,
If we but dare to be real,
And have the courage to see
That this is the best time to dream
The best dream of them all.
Ben Okri, last stanza 'Mental Fight'

With Christmas Love x

World Poetry Day

In Praise of dreams by Wislawa Szymborska

In my dreams

I paint like Vermeer van Delft.

I speak fluent Greek

and not just with the living.

....

I am gifted

and write mighty epics.

...

My brilliance as a pianist

would stun you.

I fly the way we ought to.

i.e, on my own.

I've got no problem

breathing under water.

I can't complain:

I've been able to locate Atlantis.

...

A few years ago

I saw two suns.

And the night before last a penguin,

clear as day.

Vermeer van Delft

What can you do in your dreams?

Little Rays of Light

I think that this, apart from Jane Austen, was probably my first Virago. This quote is on page four of my original book of quotes, so probably around the time I was 16... This passage spoke to me then and speaks to me now...

'However dark things may seem little rays of light and understanding will break through. Perhaps this is all there will ever be, all we have the right to expect. But so long as we are open to receive them that is all that matters. Whatever happens we must never shrug our shoulders and say
"Well, I had such dreams and nothing came of them, but things haven't been so bad, I've got along somehow."
You must never do that to yourself. Delve into your despair and rage against it, rather than that. But never subscribe to the littleness of life.' Mary Hocking Welcome Strangers.

rays of light

Aren't Virago novels all about not 'subscribing to the littleness of life', whatever that may mean for our situation?

And in another year everything will be different yet again.

A quote for New Year's Day.

'She thought a year ago I would never have dreamed...that we could be here, like this, that I would feel as I do, that I could have become a new person. And in another year everything will be different yet again. It is always like that, and always will be; you are forever standing on the brink, in a place where you cannot see ahead; there is nothing of certain except what lies behind. This should be terrifying, but somehow it is not.' Penelope Lively Consequences

reflections

How do you feel about last year?

Dreams

"Dreams are private, she said. And she is right. A dream is a story that no one else will get to hear or read.

Thanks to dreams, in the history of the galaxy the world has been reivented more often than there are stars.'

Lloyd Jones Mr Pip

Do you remember your dreams? I do, frequently. As a teenager I started to try and write them down in a journal, but dreams aren't dreamt to be written down - there are too many layers happening at the same time, or that's what happens with my dreams. Instead I would share them at breakfast, to groans from Twin and parents. Mum asked Warmth once whether he had the pleasure of hering my dreams. Today I'm going to share my dream with you.

I dreamt it was National Delia Smith Day and so for this blog I was thinking of my favourite recipe to share. I'd decided it would be her recipe for profiteroles.

(I think this dream came from looking at cookery books last night planning what to bake and cook this week.

Delia

If it really was National Delia Smith Day which recipe of hers would you share on your blog?

He Wishes for...

To end this wedding feast memory lane...

I have always loved this poem and Warmth went on about not really understanding it, what was it all about. Still we had it on one of the tables. And then... he read it to me as part of his speech....

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats

Thank you for indulging me.