The Half-Life of Dreams

The Half-Life of Dreams

With love to those who have loved me, tried to understand, comforted me through the darkest times -- accepted me as I am, unconditionally. I can never thank you enough.
With thanks to the gifted poets, writers, lyricists, and great minds who eloquently express the experience of DP and mental illness -- who speak to me and comfort me -- my Kindred Spirits. Their words appear throughout this site, reminding me I am not alone.

With admiration to those who persevere in their battles with mental illness, who find meaningful, productive lives despite dreams deferred or who have fought to keep their dreams alive.

"But some of us shall die and shall be forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them.
Even memory is not necessary for love.
There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

- Thornton Wilder - AnnieBelle at 80
AnnnieBelle, nanny and life-line. 2002

Photo by Peg Price. Used by permission.
Saguaro with Blooms
© Peg Price. "What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore -
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over -
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?"

- Langston Hughes -

"I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading--treading--till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through--
And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum--
Kept beating--beating till I thought
My Mind was going numb--
And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space--began to toll,
As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary here--
And then a Plank in Reason, broke--
And I dropped down, and down--
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing--then--"

- Emily Dickinson -
Mexican Bird of Paradise.
©Peg Price. May, 2004

Bath time with Belle.
Bathtime with Belle. "Tell me, did the wind sweep you off your feet? Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of day, and head back to the Milky Way?
And tell me, did Venus blow your mind? Was it everything you wanted to find? And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there? "

- TRAIN -
"Drops of Jupiter"

"This is the book I never read
These are the words I never said
This is the path I'll never tread
These are the dreams I'll dream instead
This is the joy that's seldom spread
These are the tears...
The tears we shed
This is the fear
This is the dread
These are the contents of my head
And these are the years that we have spent
And this is what they represent
And this is how I feel
Do you know how I feel?
'Cause I don't think you know how I feel
I don't think you know what I feel
I don't think you know what I feel
You don't know what I feel."
- Annie Lennox -
"Why?"

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