recycling emotions through revisitations

having recently returned from a happy weekend with my dad and my little brother listening to some blues down in telluride, i have spent the last day or so in a dull daydream coming down from a familiarity high. daydreams of old songs with new associations carrying familiar feelings of complete happiness. yes, i would say and did say, that everything my weekend had encompassed was colored by such a vivid shade of blue. this blue was vibrant, fun even, with a lingering sense of sadness. this sadness, of course, was in the coming down. the exposure of the real through the familiar.

this afternoon i sat in a literature class still daydreaming in shades of blue through emotions that were only loosely attached to the story we were discussing. it was a 77 page story; the first few pages introduced a group of young boys who had discovered a dead body in a river. this body was still trapped in the car, still trapped in the river; meanwhile i was trapped in emotional revisitations too familiar to allow momentary mental movement. the first revisitation was in the blue; the second in my associating the opening pages with the film, 'stand by me,'; and the third a bit more abstract.

emotional revisitation number 3 was in a dream i had had the night prior to reading the assigned story. i was with my mother (oh how the familial is familiar) and we were out for a winter stroll when we happened upon a lake that had just recently frozen over. this lake hung at the bottom of a valley where many young children stood bemusing over two large vehicles that had seemingly lost control, fell into the valley, and were now sinking into the slightly frozen lake. what followed was rather dramatic, but the short of it was that several of these children ended up in the lake as well, followed by my mom, followed by me who was somehow able to save all drowning parties.

so you can see how this recollection was also playing out as i read the story; a story which was now shaded by the blues hangover, the emotional attachment to youthful bliss, and the frozen fear of losing family. hmmm, a far cry from where the story was heading.

so my questions are as follow. do we get to a point where we become comfortable with recycling emotions through these recollections and revisitations of old feelings accompanying new associations? do we do this in education? how about through reader response? or recycled role-playing? there is an element of ease and comfort in the recycling...enough to open you up to the growing process, but can we solely grow through fun alone? if so, why do we have growing pains?

you could say that what i am experiencing now is somewhat painful. painful in the let down that all that is fun and familiar doesn't always yield desired growth. of course i am not sold on this idea, because i can't get enough of the blues no matter how limiting a 1-4-5 can be.