What Are We Doing Again?

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These words are so simple, and yet….

I can’t get them out of my head.  What does this mean?  The phrase takes me all the way back to high school English and teachers who analyzed poetry in particular,  but also pretty much every other written thing, to death.  I admit I liked trying to impress them with my twisted take on things.  I expect a lot of authors would have been totally baffled by the garbage we came up with that they never meant at all.

Anyway, I want to know what you think.  Please take my poll.

There are no wrong answers.  Probably there are no right answers either.  Thank you class.  No going home for you until you finish this.  I will mail you your marks.

 

 

7 thoughts on “What Are We Doing Again?”

  2. I cannot be kind to everyone. It just does not work. As for home it’s whatever you believe it is, just like your Higher Power is the god of your understanding. Hopefully we are headed in the same direction whatever that is. Surely Ram Das knows?

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  3. Oh, I remember it well, college lit analyzing e.e. cummings. As a writer I know that people attribute thoughts and symbolism to my work that certainly didn’t know I was constructing at the time. In this case, none of the poll options are just right. I think that it has something to do with the safety, companionship and special treatment of being “walked home”. It would certainly cover oneness until we cross over…
    Now I’m just blathering.

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  4. Two thoughts:
    (1) Your thoughts on interpreting the works of others struck a deep chord. I thought a lot of the conclusions reached by we students and by lettered academics alike were nonsense. However, I didn’t think the exercise of looking for deeper meaning was nonsense. It made us all think, and we did discover meaning that added to our understanding and enjoyment of the works and that we would have missed had we not looked.
    (2) The Ram Dass quote takes me back to the time I spent volunteering at a library bookstore where our largest non-fiction section comprised “Self-Help” books–shelf upon shelf of books which often echoed each other’s sentiments, style, and sometimes, phrasings. Substantial sub-sections were authored by a few standout charismatic gurus who seemed to pump out the same message repeatedly under different covers and titles. Not saying Ram Dass necessarily fits this category, but the tone of the quotation fits the tone of these works.

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    • I think it’s the very simplicity of his words that pulled me in and got me thinking I must be missing something profound and deep. What does that MEAN? And then you realize it means different things to different people and he’s accomplished what he set out to do, which is make us think.
      OR maybe he was stumbling home drunk after a party. It could go either way, hey?

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