Procrastination must be the bane of my existence. Forgetfulness must be its sister. I won’t let myself get away with one missing day where I had no excuse. Third time’s the charm, so welcome back to doodle number one–
If I choose a door, let it be the one that can beat this doodle-a-day challenge.
—
I had misheard that line from The Smiths’s “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore“–the original line uses “smother” instead of “swallow.” Kind of like remembering a certain Robert Burns poem wrong.
When you are 18, you feel like the door has just opened. Time’s tide has not smothered you yet. The world feels remarkable. Idealism has not been thrown out the window, and the doors that will one day close remain beckoning for us, but the moment we choose one, other doors will start to close.
And then time’s tide really will swallow you.
—
Wednesday night at our school’s band concert, the two main band directors introduced the seniors and the schools they were heading off to. Interestingly, there was a disproportionately large number of marine engineers and computer scientists compared to very few music majors.
Perhaps as they chose their doors, the other doors that lead to conducting or composing or performing start to close. Maybe they’re okay about it. If they are, then they are braver than I am.
—
“We may not have much time…but it’s enough!”
—
I Could Give All To Time
by Robert Frost
To Time it never seems that he is brave
To set himself against the peaks of snow
To lay them level with the running wave,
Nor is he overjoyed when they lie low,
But only grave, contemplative and grave.
What now is inland shall be ocean isle,
Then eddies playing round a sunken reef
Like the curl at the corner of a smile;
And I could share Time’s lack of joy or grief
At such a planetary change of style.
I could give all to Time except – except
What I myself have held. But why declare
The things forbidden that while the Customs slept
I have crossed to Safety with? For I am There,
And what I would not part with I have kept.
—
“And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms further . . . And one fine morning—
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past.”
-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Most of what I’ve been posting are high school curriculum literary references. I imagine my college curriculum will broaden my writing abilities and knowledge more.
The Doodler Process 