Somewhere over the rainbow

'Somewhere over the Rainbow/way up high/there's a land that I heard of/once in a lullaby...' Yes, a song of wish fulfilment, a wistful yearning for that one place where the troubles, little or big, of this worldwill no longer plague us, as George Orwell termed it in Animal Farm, the Sugar Candy mountain each of us secretly or perhaps even openly craves...but in Animal Farm, we see that the people who oppress others the most are the ones who promise the assurance of this paradise to those they put through torture...the idea that suffering eventually will liberate us from suffering...a problematic idea, because this can serve as a justification to continue oppressing others...but sometimes, though this statement is fraught with complexities, one can't help but close one's eyes and think upon that land... Alright this will be a rambling post...echoing the long walks my mind revels in taking...I am posting a poem by John Clare here, which I love: >I Am! BY JOHN CLARE I am—yet what I am none cares or knows; My friends forsake me like a memory lost: I am the self-consumer of my woes— They rise and vanish in oblivious host, Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, Into the living sea of waking dreams, Where there is neither sense of life or joys, But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems; Even the dearest that I loved the best Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest. I long for scenes where man hath never trod A place where woman never smiled or wept There to abide with my Creator, God, And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, Untroubling and untroubled where I lie The grass below—above the vaulted sky. What strikes me in particular about this poem is that despite being dismissed or critically judged by elements of the world, Clare's own self-belief is largely unshaken as he firmly establishes his identity and asserts "I am!"