Tuesday, March 29, 2005

R & J ~ dreaming again

For the last year or so, whenever I've been troubled in life, I get the same dream. I dream that Romeo & Juliet is being performed again and that I'm due on stage (usually in an hour or so) and that I've forgotten the lines.

I had this dream again last night, for possibly the 8th or 9th time. In the dream I could only remember:

Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?
Ah poor my Lord, what tongue shall smooth thy name
When I thy three hours' wife hath mangled it?
But wherefore villain didst thou kill my cousin?
That villain cousin would have killed my husband!
Back foolish tears! Back to your native springs!
Your tributary drops belong to woe
Which you mistaking offer up to joy
My husband lives that Tybalt would have slain
And Tybalt's dead that would have slain my husband
All this is comfort - wherefore weep I then?
One word there was, worser than Tybalt's death
That murdured me - I would forget it fain
But oh how it presses to my memory!
Like damned guilty deeds to sinners' minds!

And then I could remember no more. I wasn't on stage I was just practicing. But I was also worried that I could no longer remember my costume changes or my entrances or exits.

Romeo & Juliet was a success - I didn't screw up. I don't understand why it continues to haunt me. But it only does when I'm worried about something else. Like before my Cambridge interview, my exam results, or when I argued badly with Will last year.

Right now I'm very confused inside, and not at liberty to say why. It was always something I'd seen as an improbable fantasy, or a jokey idea. And then suddenly it was a reality. And now it's a memory. I should feel guilt but I don't. I was elated but now even that has passed. I feel like I have taken a drug that I'll never get the chance to take again. And the funny thing is, I don't know whether I'm relieved, upset, happy, or just frustrated.

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