To Be or Not To Be

A little kingdom I possess,
Where thoughts and feelings dwell;
And very hard the task I find
Of governing it well.
~ Louisa May Alcott

...that more or less describes my situation!

~A Wise Man Said~

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ Aristotle
Sunday, June 02, 2019
 

I was reflecting to myself, because I seem to be writing in verse form far often these days than for some years past, what it is that makes me capture some thoughts in verse and certain others in prose. The conclusion that I came to is that when it comes to a “feeling” or “feelings” in general, I seem to be able to express them more freely in verse (express to my satisfaction, I mean). I am unable to capture emotions or feelings in prose because their beauty is their vagueness, their ephemeral nature, their non-specificity, and by putting them in prose I might almost kill the very thing I want to give life to. Verse allows me to capture them in a sense as they are... fluid and intangible even to myself. I find the exercise though quite difficult and excruciating because my natural tendency is to clarify, to examine, to analyse, to get to the heart of things, to lay the idea threadbare by unravelling it bit by bit… but I find that not every subject lends itself to this treatment… some thoughts or rather feelings have to be given their own rein and allowed to lead us how they will… that can be as much a process of discovery as when we lead an idea by the horns…probably speaks to the fact that one can be master of one’s head but the heart heeds its own bidding!

posted by Sylvia D'souza at 2:53 am 1 comments
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