Tomorrow Is Another Day...

The Impossible Dream

I'm reading Don Quixote right now, and I'm finding it surprisingly funny and touching.  I have been wanting to read it for a while because Man of La Mancha is one of my favorite musicals.  Or at least, it's one of my favorite soundtracks.  I've not yet had the chance to see it performed, but I've listened to the music while reading the libretto, and much like the book, it is both heartwarming, sad, and absurd.

So, as I make my way through the novel, I usually end up singing the music to myself as I read, and the songs get stuck on repeat in my head throughout the day.  Tonight, I decided to take a break from Christmas music to listen to the album, and when it got to The Impossible Dream, I stood frozen at the sink, hot water running, dirty pot in hand, listening to the lyrics.  Really hearing the words.

I've always thought it was a beautiful song, but as I listened this evening, my eyes filled with tears because it resonated in a new way.  It says everything I've been trying to tell myself over the past few months.  To be strong in the face of oppressive disappointment and sorrow.  To keep love alive when distance is a near constant companion.  To follow dreams into a world of fear and uncertainty in the hopes that we will come through intact.  To keep believing that despite seemingly endless setbacks, dreams can still become reality.  Clinging to those beliefs like a life raft to get myself through the bad days.

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far
To fight for the right, without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true, to this glorious quest,
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm, when I'm laid to my rest
And the world will be better for this:
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage,
To reach the unreachable star.

Why Me?

"Welcome aboard, Mr. Pilgrim," said the loudspeaker.  "Any questions?"

Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last, "Why me?"

"That is a very Earthling thing to ask, Mr. Pilgrim.  Why you?  Why us for that matter?  Why anything?  Because the moment simply is.  Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?"

"Yes." Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it.

"Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment.  There is no why."

Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut

Tranquility

"She hadn't exactly feared the word contentment, but had always associated it with a vague sense of failure.  To be discontented had always seemed much richer a thing.  To be restless, striving.  That view was romantic.  In truth, she was finding out, life was better lived in a tranquil pattern.  As long as she could read, she never tired of the design of her days."

The Master Butchers Singing Club
Louise Erdrich

Nine

"Each month I watch for blood, fearfully, for when it comes it means failure.  I have failed once again to fulfill the expectations of others, which have become my own.

"I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will.  I could use it to run, push buttons of one sort or another, make things happen.  There were limits, but my body was nevertheless lithe, single, solid, one with me.

"Now the flesh arranges itself differently.  I'm a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping.  Inside it is a space, huge as the sky at night and dark and curved like that, though black-red rather than black.  Pinpoints of light swell, sparkle, burst and shrivel within it, countless as stars.  Every month there is a moon, gigantic, round, heavy, an omen.  It transits, pauses, continues on and passes out of sight, and I see despair coming towards me like famine.  To feel that empty, again, again.  I listen to my heart, wave upon wave, salty and red, continuing on and on, marking time."

The Handmaids Tale
Margaret Atwood