Breathe the day in

Now I write poems whenever I want to, and nobody can cease the fire. At those moments when I write down words only relating to myself, I know that to everyone who have "had his lesson", Mr.Keating's spirit of "Just love, just feel and just express" have more or less exercised an invisible influence on his or her character.

When I watched the film as a student at 16, I was purely touched by the passion and love for students of my CAPTAIN. Although the specific plot is far beyond recall, I can bring it back that how the first glimpse at poetry is and how the beauty of poems came into my life.

It was a cold late night and I was spirited up with the magic words streaming out of his mouth:
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,
to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,
and not, when I came to die,
discover that I had not lived. "

Poetry is an expression of one's spontaneous desire, inner faith and genuine emotion. Mr.Keating told us to seize the day, and his students discovered their longings for life by learning to listen to the sound of nature, the voice of history, their memory and so on -- everything they knew long but ignored once.

I found a society at school called "After 17" when I was 17. We had nine members in all and I am the "teacher". They were all my peers and I shared my ideas of literature, music, drama, movie and life with them. I read aloud poems and many people's life stories with adoration at class, such as GuCheng, Haizi, Rambaud, Woolf, Kafka, Emily Brontes, Isadora Duncon... Some of their ideas affected me so much like the deeply-cut inscription did to the stone.

"I turned silences and nights into words.
What was unutterable, I wrote down.
I made the whirling world stand still.
 　　 - Arthur Rimbaud"
And after 17, I live that way.
The moment I knew them seems like the memory of yesterday.


Before long, some of my "student"s began to do their homeworks at my class, while some of them kept listening to me and enjoyed the lesson. I regard these two behaviors as two kinds of "Seize the day", for they both value the time.
Unlike Captain Keating, I hadn't the passion to catch the former's attention again probably because I didn't care, or maybe I just gave in easily in the face of their choice.

Neil's suicide made it clear that one must make sure what the vital thing is in his life, or he will live miserably since he cannot own a life under his will. Met with the difficulty in maintaining one's own beliefs in the face of others, Neil took a soundless vow -- the suicide, which can't be described as a spiritual victor nor a compromise. Neil got freedom from death, which seems improper in most people's eyes but reasonable to himself.
 "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Don't be resigned to that. Break out! "