Analysis: Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nothing Gold Can Stay
By: Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay

Analysis:
Robert Frost to me is a poet who brings about truth in a veiled way. Many of his poems talk about decisions people have made, how we see the world and how we see each other but he never actually refers to the issue he discusses. I think that's what makes him special. He brings these things to light and instead of pulling us into the seriousness he keeps it light. For instance (because who can talk about Frost without mentioning his most well known poem) The Road Not Taken is a story about making major life decisions that once made, you can not turn back and change your mind.

I picked this poem because it reminds us that nothing lasts forever and that the only constant in life is change. I think this is a very important message because change is so hard for many of us and holding onto something that has passed is impossible. I love the imagery he uses through out because it is linked to nature like many of his other poems. You can even extrapolate this idea of change can be linked to ideas of wealth, today's millionaire is tomorrow's pauper and vice versa.

If this makes you pause for a second today and consider how you handle change and all the different cycles in life, I think Mr. Frost will be very pleased.

Review: Todd The Dreamer

Todd The Dreamer
By: Bonnie Rozanski
ASIN: B004BLK9WI

Summary via Amazon:
Lucid dreaming (def): The rare state in which a dreamer knows it’s a dream.

In lucid dreams, you can change the storyline to whatever you want.
- Like to fly over the rooftops? Go right ahead.
- Kill off your demanding boss? Do so with impunity.
- Enjoy awe-inspiring sex with a gorgeous someone who in real life doesn’t even know you exist? Do I even need to ask?

Todd Goldman is an ordinary young man. He has tried his hand at various low-level jobs and succeeded at nothing. All his life, he has let life lead him, not the other way around…until the day he answers an advertisement for a sleep lab, and enrolls in a study of lucid dreams.

Todd finds he is a quick study at lucidity, and increasingly learns to control the content of his dreams. In contrast, unfortunately, his life is an uncontrollable mess. He fights with his girlfriend and struggles to gain some independence from his parents. He loses his day job. The beautiful technician at the sleep lab thinks he’s a jerk.

However, in his lucid dreams, and in the out-of-body experiences that follow, Todd is able to create the life he wants, a situation so seductive that his dreams begin to take over his life.

But then, of course, what is the reader to believe? Is Todd indeed out-of-body despite the doctors’ insistence it is just an unusual dream? Is the chief researcher truly willing to forfeit Todd’s life if it means getting good pictures of his brain? And do the sleep doctors in fact plan to lock him away in a psychiatric ward?

Review:
In this story we follow Todd who is unbearably boring and ordinary. In a main character this is terrible but I understand what the author was trying to point out, Todd's life is run by what the world throws at him not by any drive on his part. Todd in this story doesn't make any decisions of any kind until the sleep clinic is involved and then its as if he is addicted.

As a psychological book it was very interesting because it makes you ask many questions and brings to light many different psychological issues. What is real? What is the dream? Is it paranoia if they are really out to get you? Are they actually trying? etc. I also enjoyed the medical ethics portion of this book. Is there a point when a study goes too far? Shouldn't the doctors know when the patient is taking something too far and know to stop it?


Overall, I give this book a one because it was dry at too many parts and the characters are one dimensional. What kept me reading to the end was the psychological aspects not the actual story. This book is similar to a case study but with some flights of fancy thrown in. In the future I would love to see this author round out her characters and make their situations/decisions more complex.