Before today, I had never heard of Puff the Magic Dragon. Amazing, I know! I guess I was just more of a Little Mermaid and Scooby Do kind of kid. But today, while reading the poem of Puff's life, I actually started to tear up. Not only was the story sad but it reminded me of the time when I too had to grow up and stop visiting Ariel in my dreams. This is something that happens to everyone but what might not happen to everyone is the ability to remember back to this time and realize how much impact it had on the rest of a person's life. Now I cannot remember the exact day when my dreams stopped involving the romantic and mythological and became to center around my reality. But I do know that when that did happen, my life became much more mundane and unmemorable. And this truly is an utter shame! Now I might not remember exactly what my dreams were when I was a child but I do remember that they were amazing and awesome (which is a way overused word in our language) and mythological. I might not have known what stories I was re-enacting in my subconscious but I did recognize their importance. Once I lost these dreams, I lost my connection to my imagination which was my lifeline to the Muses. The loss of the Muses unbounded impact in my impact led to even greater consequences, the connection I have to their mother, Mnemosyne, or more contemporarily, my memory!
This has been a very roundabout way of describing how influential and important, my tears are when related to Puff the Dragon.
One grey night it happened,
Jackie Paper came no moreAnd Puff that mighty dragon,
He ceased his fearless roar.
His head now bent in sorrow,
Green scales fell like rain,
And Puff no longer went to play
Along that cheery lane.
Without his life-long friend,
He could not be brave
This one stanza of the poem is what effected me so strongly. It was so depressingly horrible to imagine this big strong dragon brought to this state through loneliness, which in reality transcribes into meaning not having anyone believing in him. I'm sure this is how the Muses feel when children grow into adults and stop allowing them to influence their dreams. But the power of our memories allow us to once again experience this feeling and influence of our own personal muses and memory, even if for only a minute, an hour, or a day. So I feel need to give a big shout out to Puff the Dragon for allowing me to remember my childhood dreams. I can't wait to be his Jackie Paper for one night before I morph back into the adult I have become.
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