These ideas are very various in quality; some of them deliciously haunting and transporting, some grave and solemn, some painfully sad and strong. Some of them seem to hint at unseen beauty and joy, some have to do with problems of conduct and duty, some with the relation in which we wish to stand or are forced to stand with other human beings; some are questionings born of grief and pain, what the meaning of sorrow is, whether pain has a further intention, whether the spirit survives the life which is all that we can remember of existence; but the strange thing about all these ideas is that we find them suddenly in the mind and soul; we do not seem to invent them, though we cannot trace them; and even if we find them in books that we read or words that we hear, they do not seem wholly new to us; we recognize them as things that we have dimly felt and perceived, and the reason why they often have so mysterious an effect upon us is that they seem to take us outside of ourselves, further back than we can recollect, beyond the faint horizon, into something as wide and great as the illimitable sea or the depths of sunset sky.
Benson, Arthur. “Ideas.” 1922. Quotidiana. Ed. Patrick Madden. 13 Oct 2008. 04 Sep 2009 .
Dreams satisfy a gamut of emotions and feelings; some are tangible and seem to coagulate at the base of the skull solidifying the message which it conveys, some form as condensation the byproduct of two subconscious ideas entwining; some simply arrive in a transient vapor promising only a temporary glimpse of something more. Some offer pleasure eliviating pain and sorrow augmented in the daylight hours, some come to brand the pains and sorrows like a hot, fire-kissed poker into the soft gray matter known as the mind, some are inquaries of past events lending an alternative perspective unable to obtain during consciousness; some comprise of honor and responsibility, some are feverish nightmares submerged from years of repression; however, all these dreams are often familiar. They are the vehicles which transport us to places we know suprisingly well, allow us to interact with strangers whose touch is not unknown to the skin; they are a microcosm to a world one that we percieve shortly at night; as our head is weighed down with gravity's pull the mind escapes the prison and follows the well trodden path to the dream world; as our journey comes to a close at day break we leave a portion of ourselves behind; some part of our fears, some part of our most secret desires, some part of our unbridled passion, some of our undying love, some of our loaded burdens. But as twilight once again arrives we leave this narrow minded world and recover what we left in the broad and endless world of slumber as unfathomable as the night sky with its undiscovered mysteries.
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I thought that this a very well written thought. I thought that the line: "Some offer pleasure eliviating pain and sorrow augmented in the daylight hours, some come to brand the pains and sorrows like a hot, fire-kissed poker into the soft gray matter known as the mind..." was a excellent example of visual imagery and has the ability to cause one to experience some very deep thoughts that may have an emotional connection to you.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this piece. Throughout the whole thing I was wrapped in the imagery and found myself smiling and agreeing with all of the statements. Your thoughts were clearly stated, and I could follow very easily through the whole piece.
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