Staying Awake in the Snow

Last night I dreamed a long now-forgotten dream about "a contest between gentleness and fighting." Samantha was in the dream, my high-achieving daughter. I wanted to sleep, to rest, and she kept saying, "Mom, fight! Mom, fight!"

On waking I remembered a long-ago warning that if you're caught in a blizzard you will be tempted to fall asleep but that this is fatal. And I finally realized the meaning of Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night."

My enemy tells me it's too late. The seat of the chair is too hard. The enemy grabs onto anything. If discontent, flog her with it. If content, smother her in it and she'll never get up.

Creation demands pools of time, days of staring into space and brooding over chaos. You have to have confidence that your talent will rise up and bring you back into the fray. The fray, get it? Because I fray, I gray.

One's consciousness changes and before long you don't care any more. Last night I was remembering how Thomas Aquinas said everything he'd written was of no account. Wonder how old he was.

--Thomas underwent an intense personal experience on December 6, 1273, which caused him to cease writing forever... When his several admirers asked him why, he replied, "I cannot, for all that I have written seems like straw to me." Friar Thomas died March 7, 1274, aged 49.

(From "Two Cheers for Thomas Aquinas" by David Tracy, edited by Ted and Winnie Brock at http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1608)

-- Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though the wise at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

The good, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild ones who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

You grave, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas (edited for misogyny)