Never Dream of Regretting

My cell phone indicated a missed call from my daughter Sara this morning. So I phoned her on my way into work. Seems she had had a dream about me last night. I had painted a painting; midnight blue with ruins of red and blackbirds flying. I smiled because it is exactly like something I would paint. Then she said that in the dream I had died. Dreams about death are not really about death but rather about change; that who we were or who the person was will be unrecognizable to us; that they will change or we are changing in fundamental ways that render us forever different from how we were. The great thing about this death dream is that it was marked with creativity, the painting.

And I’ve been sad lately; well, not so sad as disenfranchised. Misunderstood, detached. Thus the poems of losing gravity and turning to threads, etc. But I do feel I’m learning. And the following quote showed up in my email this morning as well. Wednesday, the midst of the week, suitable for a shift of winds, of currents, or either striving on or turning back.


"The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing
that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you
may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may
miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil
lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds.
There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags
and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never
exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and
never dream of regretting."
- spoken by Merlyn the Magician in T. H. White's, *The Once and Future
King*