"A word in earnest is as good as a speech"
~Charles Dickens: Bleak House

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Literature Tuesday .... my path

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I have not written a Literature Tuesday post in quite some time. The reason for this is I have primarily been reading text books; big, thick, small print, dry, textbooks. While they impart vast amounts of knowledge, literature they are not! 

Although Millon here came closest in his extensive history of personality disorders and the evolution-based personality theory he has developed to explain the Axis II disorders and their treatments. 

As I reviewed my last post so I could remember exactly what I wrote about (memory issues and lupus - probably my least favorite symptoms) I thought about the path my life has taken, which in turn reminded me of my favorite poem - the one I always use as my quote if I am asked for one. I went to Plymouth State College for a couple of years and was very excited to discover that Robert Frost had taught there and that I was taking my English classes in a building in which he lived. I was inspired (someday I may share some of the work I wrote while there - when I get over the embarrassment of what I wrote and am able to laugh at myself a little).  There were many of Frost's poems I fell in love with at the time: Mending Wall, A Brook in the City, Gathering Leaves, and One Step Backward Taken. But always, from the first moment my eyes fell upon the words I connected with the Road Not Taken. And while I can say without a doubt that the road not taken has led me on an interesting and wild journey, I have often wondered about the path I did not take, the one we never get to go back to. Then I shake my head and smile because if I had made a different choice, if I had followed the more worn path I wouldn't be who I am today, and I certainly would not want that. 
Frost House @ Plymouth State University
Where I took my English Classes!

The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


Robert Frost Statue @ Plymouth State University


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