Doodle Notes

¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño;
que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son.

- Pedro Calderón de la Barca

I found this poem when I was studying Spanish in high school and immediately fell in love with it so much that I memorized it.

It's about life and how it is but an illusion, a shadow and fiction.

I totally forgot all about it for 30 years, but then suddenly, while I was walking my dog in a pitch black forest one night, the poem's last sentence popped in my mind.

"...que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son."

"The whole life is a dream, and dreams are dreams."

Back then I had translated "sueño" as a dream that you dream at night. I thought that life is something that (in my worst case scenario) you wake up to one day and realize that you had but been asleep. I resisted the idea of going through my life like that!

Now, when this poem came back to me, I realized that it might also mean a daydream, one you dream while you're awake.

In Finnish we have unique words for each phenomenon, so I find it tricky to choose which one it is while operating in English. My friend confirmed that it's the same with Spanish.

So, for the first time I now started to ponder how this poem could be illustrated with this new insight...

I ended up illustrating the whole poem.

Please, don't mind my translation, it's just how I experience this poem, and I don't remember all the words, but that's okay!

What is life? A frenzy.

What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction.

And a great ________________ is small,

The whole life is a dream,

And dreams are dreams.

Only Love remains.

On a great day, it feels wonderful to think about waking into Love. But on a lousy one, it can be quite depressing to think that all that you thought there was, the life you've built, would just vanish like a dream you can't recall after breakfast.

BUT...

If instead your whole life was a daydream that you imagined, then it's a different game.

When you wake up from THAT kind of dream, I think it opens up a whole world of possibilities. You might wake up to see that you are not there yet, but when you stick with Love, you'll find out that life is wonderful in the here and now, no matter what.

This is an invitation to stop imagining, to stay in the present moment, and learn from there!

---

You can read the whole poem in Spanish here.

My Inspiration & Delight

Yesterday, I had the pleasure to give two of the peonies to a little girl I know. What a wonderful experience it was to see those beautiful tiny hands to explore what these flowers hold inside.

I might have crocheted enough of these for now.

Onward to the next project!

These patterns are available in this book.
I've made small changes to the patterns.

What inspires you today?