alt_regulus | (no subject)

Well, yes. And I suppose you have to enjoy languages to bother with the original texts of writers like Calderón de la Barca, but he was a poet and a philosopher, so reading is sometimes the only way to really catch and chew on what he's saying.

Still and all, he's wrong to go dismissing all our culpability for the things we do. It's all well and good to dismiss life as a dream (that's another title of his, by the way), but it won't do to say everything just illusory because then you imply that we're not, in the end, authors of our own deeds. Or that what we do hasn't any important substance. D'you see? I've been working myself into quite a state over this dusty old Spaniard, and I really should quit him, except that he's so bloody beautiful sometimes.

Éstas que fueron pompa y alegría 
despertando al albor de la mañana,
 a la tarde serán lástima vana 
durmiendo en brazos de la noche fría.

That's from a sonnet of his that likens roses to people in their short-lived beauty. It's really poignant. Also true. To put it into English, he talks of the splendour and vigour of the flowers when, in the morning, they awake, but he points out that evening inevitably comes and with it the realisation that all vitality is vain and pathetic, a prelude to our long sleep in night's cold arms.

That's good, isn't it? Night's cold arms?

Terrible, but true.

Oh, so that's what you meant. That if you've sinned just by being born, the rest all doesn't really count.

I still don't think that paints a rosy picture. Neither does the poem for that matter. Haha. Although you're right, it does sound very beautiful. And sad. I wish I could read foreign languages. I think I'll ask mum to hire a French tutor while we're in Scotland over summer hols.

If you do bad deeds in your dreams or think about doing them, does that count just as much as really doing it? I don't think so, because there is a choice, I think, between wanting to do something bad and actually deciding to do it. And because we have choices, what we do really does mean something.

If that's the case, then I don't think splendour and vigour is vain and pathetic at all.

Hey.

You're not having bad dreams again, are you?

Are you?

Sometimes. They are the kind where I'm running around in a maze and can't find the exit, or I'm running late for something, only I can't remember what I'm late for. I do lots of running when I dream lately.

I haven't had really bad dreams since last term, though. The screaming kind, I mean.

~~It's funny, but sometimes, I really miss Marie.~~

I'm sorry to hear it, my friend.

Is there any relation between the times when you suffer the dreams and the days when your stomach troubles you? Or does it seem wholly random when the dreams come?

I don't believe our dreams can be held against us, by the way, unless we really are wandering about, committing mayhem whilst we sleep. That would seem to fall into a grey area where, at the very least, it's incumbent upon the dreamer to seek help. Of course, we don't get to take credit for anything we do in dreams, either.

Well, I've been noticing more of both lately, so maybe. I can't imagine hurt stomachs are good for sleeping.

I feel fine now, though. That potion Madame Pomphrey gave me really did help things.

I used to sleepwalk last term, you know, but I mostly just went down to the common room and sat by the fire, which isn't very exciting. No mayhem for me.

I think I'm going to have excellent dreams tonight.

Oh?

Was there something especially delicious for pudding tonight?

Not really. It was rice pudding, which always looks gross, but tastes okay I guess. I can't wait til we get strawberries in season again. Yum.

But between poetry and plays and French tutors, I think I'll have plenty of exciting and interesting things to think on tonight.

And that's the only reason, is it?

Naturally!