“I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?” ― John Lennon
“I don’t paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality.” ― Frida Kahlo
“I still get nightmares. In fact, I get them so often I should be used to them by now. I’m not. No one ever really gets used to nightmares.” ― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
“There are many who don’t wish to sleep for fear of nightmares. Sadly, there are many who don’t wish to wake for the same fear.” ― Richelle E. Goodrich, Dandelions: The Disappearance of Annabelle Fancher
“You learned to run from what you feel, and that’s why you have nightmares. To deny is to invite madness. To accept is to control.” ― Megan Chance, The Spiritualist
“My sleep wasn’t peaceful, though. I have the sense of emerging from a world of dark, haunted places where I traveled alone.” ― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
QUOTATIONS on DREAMS:
“I like the night. Without the dark, we’d never see the stars.” ― Stephenie Meyer, Twilight
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt
“I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart for so long. If we’re in each other’s dreams, we can be together all the time.” ― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
“People think dreams aren’t real just because they aren’t made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.” ― Neil Gaiman
“We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.” ― Arthur O’Shaughnessy, Poems of Arthur O’Shaughnessy
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” ― John Lennon
“You know that place between sleeping and awake, that place where you can still remember dreaming? That’s where I’ll always think of you.” ― J.M. Barrie
The Great Gatsby
Film Review
Character Analysis
Film Trailer
Post Created by j.kiley
Posted May 10th 2013 Passages
“When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more of the riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction–Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life…This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of “creative temperament”–it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such that I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No–Gatsby turned out all right in the end; it was what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elation’s of men” (Fitzgerald 6-7).
This passage, located in the first chapter, is a reflection of Nick’s feelings after the summer of 1922. The unique organization of the book placed this reflection before the actual events, so that it serves to foreshadow what will come. After his summer of parties, decadence and intrigue Nick is disgusted by the modern culture and society. After only one summer, he is prepared to return to the comfort of routine and familiarity that he associates with his home. The only person who has not diminished in his sight is Jay Gatsby, because, in spite of Gatsby’s lavish lifestyle, there was a vitality and enthusiasm about him that impressed Nick. This passage summarizes the final phase of Nick’s emotional and intellectual transformation. Nick experienced interest, involvement and finally disgust. This feeling of disgust and disillusionment with the roaring twenties is a strong sentiment throughout the book.
“They had forgotten me but Daisy glanced up and held out her hand; Gatsby didn’t know me now at all. I looked once more at them and they looked back at me, remotely, possessed by intense life. Then I went out of the room and down the marble steps into the rain, leaving them there together” (Fitzgerald 101-102).
This passage presents a scene in which Nick visits with Gatsby and Daisy, but is completely eclipsed by their love for each other. They see nothing beyond themselves and their own love. Nick leaves unnoticed and un-missed. This self-absorption is apparent in many of the characters throughout the book and contributes to the confusion and sorrow that ultimately occurs. Everyone is working for themselves, with little to no consideration for the feelings or needs of others. In this scene, Nick notes the vitality of the two lovers. It is Gatsby’s passion and enthusiasm for life that particularly impresses Nick, but it is this vitality that ultimately destroys his relationship with Daisy. Both these elements of passion and selfishness create an atmosphere that allows for the careless destruction of lives and people.Characters
Nick
The narrator of the story, Nick Carraway, is a self-described “tolerant” and “open-minded” man. From a wealthy and long-established midwestern family, Nick was educated at Yale and is an astute and perceptive individual. Quiet and a good listener, Nick frequently plays the role of confidante, and unwilling witness to the secrets and ambitions of his acquaintances. His own actions and ambitions are insignificant when contrasted with the observations of Gatsby and the Buchanan’s. The reader’s sense and understanding of Nick’s character comes largely from his reactions to the actions of his friends. He is not an impartial judge, and makes his sentiments known. Like Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, Nick’s experiences alter his perspective on the world. He observes the actions of those around him, and is not unmoved by them. Like Scout, he finds much to repulse him and disappoint him in his fellow humans. Where Scout was repulsed by racism, Nick is sickened by the vices and excesses of the Roaring Twenties. Nick, unlike Scout, is an educated adult, but this does little to prepare him for the atmosphere of wild abandon he finds in New York society.
Daisy
Daisy Buchanan is a distant cousin of Nick’s, who enchants and attracts people with her sensual personality as well as her beauty. On the exterior, Daisy seems to have achieved complete success with her marriage to the wealthy Tom Buchanan, and her popularity within the higher social circles. In reality, Daisy is stuck in a faltering marriage with an adulterous husband, and little true enjoyment. With the arrival of Gatsby, her former love, Daisy experiences a short period of passionate happiness and feeling. This only serves to heighten her internal confusion, as she struggles to determine what type of life she wants to lead and with whom she wishes to spend that life. This struggle demonstrates Daisy’s weakness of character and her malleability. Daisy is supposedly based on Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda. Like Zelda Daisy is a winsome and attractive woman, but she has a love for the material things of life. She is fairly superficial, and her outward graces cover a love of money and position.
Tom
Tom Buchanan, Daisy’s husband, is a domineering and determined fellow. Defined by strong and stubborn opinions and feelings that are often ill-founded, Tom’s character is a destructive one. He marches recklessly and heedlessly forward without consideration to the trouble he causes for others. Engaged in an affair, he is unfaithful in marriage and makes Daisy’s life terribly unhappy. He shares many characteristics with Stanley from A Streetcar Named Desire. Both men demonstrate primitive qualities and a propensity for anger and aggression. They are physical and bestial men. Unconcerned with the destruction they create, both hurt the women that they love and offend those with whom they interact.
Gatsby
Jay Gatsby is the mysterious and wealthy neighbor who becomes the subject of Nick’s attention all summer. A self-made man from a poor background, Gatsby is brimming with life and enthusiasm. His passion and energy amaze Nick as well as his other acquaintances. He is the constant subject of speculation and gossip because of his intense nature, odd habits, and lack of established history. As Nick discovers, the driving force behind Gatsby’s actions is his love for Daisy. In his mind Gatsby has transformed Daisy into an angel, and his love for her has fueled his drive to be successful. Gatsby is much like the Rhett Butler figure in Gone with the Wind, because like Rhett, he is mysterious and constantly confounding convention. He has worked hard to establish his fortune, and his reputation has grown to extreme proportions. His love of Daisy motivates him, in much the same way that Rhett’s love of Scarlet dictates his actions. By admitting this love, both of these characters are demonstrating a vulnerability uncharacteristic of them, or at least of their reputation. Gatsby, the tragic lover, remains a mystery throughout, even when confiding in Nick.
Carey Mulligan & Leonardo Dicaprio
The Great Gatsby
A grandiose, colorful, pleasure-drenched night at the movies.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
By Dana Stevens|Posted Thursday, May 9, 2013, at 6:34 PM
Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan in The Great Gatsby.
As Nick Carraway, the mild-mannered but eagle-eyed narrator of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, observes in the book’s early pages, “Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.” So it was with a Zen mind that I tried to approach Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of the book, which, intelligent debunkings aside, I really do regard as one of the great American novels of the 20th century—and probably inherently unfilmable. Literary adaptations of books in which the language is all—particularly the work of high-modern prose stylists like Fitzgerald, Proust, Nabokov, Woolf—seem doomed to either plodding literalism or airy insubstantiality. (Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita had a nasty sense of humor all its own, but the script, written by Nabokov himself, dispensed almost entirely with the narrative voice that makes the novel so perversely seductive.)
Then there was the fact that Baz Luhrmann, the Australian director of such grand-scale entertainments as Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge, and Australia, was the one who would be turning Fitzgerald’s economic tone poem of a novel into a big, glitzy 3-D spectacle. I’ve never been fond of Luhrmann’s films, and have only been able to tolerate a couple. (I think I walked out of Moulin Rouge, back when I wasn’t a film critic and could indulge in such luxuries.) His mania for heaping one visual excess atop another—look at this! No, look at this!— strikes me as a form of directorial ADD, an inability to let himself or the audience rest. And as a member of that winded audience, I sense an implicit condescension in Luhrmann’s tendency to flag and then re-flag a film’s major themes as his films go on—themes that were not introduced subtly the first time around. In Baz Luhrmann movies, ideas arrive with an ensemble.
But of course, The Great Gatsby is the story of a supremely unsubtle man given to bold gestures and flashy set pieces, so maybe Luhrmann was born to adapt it. At any rate, his Great Gatsby was nowhere near as terrible as I feared. It is, as I suspected, a gargantuan hunk of over-art-directed kitsch, but it makes for a grandiose, colorful, pleasure-drenched night at the movies. And far from betraying the spirit of Fitzgerald’s novel, Luhrmann (along with his co-screenwriter Craig Pearce) treats the book with a loving mix of straight-ahead reverence and postmodern playfulness. During the huge, highly choreographed party sequences that structure the story (this isn’t a musical, but the recurring music- and dance-heavy sequences make it feel like one), you’re more likely to hear Jay-Z, Kanye West, and Lana Del Rey than you are a tinny vintage recording of “Ain’t We Got Fun?”, the flapper-age standard that figures in a scene in the novel and that played at the end of the stillborn 1974 Robert Redford version. Luhrmann’s use of contemporary pop may spring mainly from a desire to sell soundtrack albums, but the notion of using hip-hop as a backdrop for Jazz Age euphoria makes sense: With his new wealth, loud pink suit, and impossibly sweet crib, Gatsby is a rap star before his time.
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Dance-floor playlists aside, this Gatsby unfolds in a fairly conventional period setting (though this is the ’20s as seen through a distorting kaleidoscope, everything a little bigger and louder and lusher than life). In a klutzy frame story that’s absent from the novel, we meet Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) at a sanatorium where he’s recovering from “morbid alcoholism” and assorted mental maladies. He begins to tell his story to a benevolent, Santa Claus-like shrink, who provides him with a pen and paper with which to write it down. Later Nick will trade these tools in for a typewriter; whatever writing tool he uses, the words will occasionally drift up around him on the screen, then break apart and drift around him in a cloud of floating 3-D letters. It’s a hokey device, but the Nick-as-author conceit gives us an excuse to listen some choice passages of Fitzgerald’s prose, which Maguire, giving a surprisingly quiet performance at this chaotic movie’s heart, delivers beautifully. Thematically, though, it does seem a mistake to turn The Great Gatsby into a self-referential bildungsroman about a young man’s journey to healing through authorship. When Nick finally pens in “The Great” over his manuscript’s original title Gatsby, we don’t so much feel pride in his accomplishment as annoyance at his smugness—he’s supposed to be telling us this story out of necessity, not ambition.
The story Nick has to tell is one that anyone who’s graduated high school in the United States surely knows, at least in Cliffs Notes form: The mysterious tycoon Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) owns a gaudy estate next door to Nick’s rented cottage in the fictional Long Island village of West Egg. At one of his extravagant all-night flapper blowouts, Gatsby asks Nick to arrange a meeting with Nick’s cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan), a dazzling former debutante whom Gatsby once loved and lost as a younger, poorer man. Daisy lives directly across the sound in old-money East Egg with her rich brute of a husband, Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton), and is constantly flanked by her best friend Jordan Baker (Elizabeth Debicki), an icy-cool golf champion. Over the course of a summer, Nick is drawn into the orbit of these wealthy, powerful, lost people, whom he recognizes as a “rotten crowd” only after their unthinking cruelty has already caused irreparable harm.
Every image and set piece you remember from the novel—the crumbling oculist’s billboard that looms over the action with judging eyes; Gatsby flinging his collection of custom-made shirts at an overcome, weeping Daisy (and, thanks to the 3-D format, directly at us); the hot afternoon at the Plaza Hotel when the rivalry for Daisy’s affections comes to a head—is rendered in broad, operatic gestures. There were many moments when that broadness made me cringe: Does the CGI-aided camera always have to race at jet-ski speed across the water toward the symbolic green light on Daisy’s dock? Must Gatsby’s face really be seen for the first time against a backdrop of fireworks, as the climax of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” surges on the soundtrack? And yet for every slab of processed cheese, there’s another moment whose visual inventiveness pays off. In an early scene, Luhrmann turns one image in the novel—Nick looking out the window at a party, “simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life”—into a clever Rear Window-style tableau of a Manhattan apartment building bursting with untold stories.
Leonardo DiCaprio makes as good a Jay Gatsby as any living actor I can think of—he captures the character’s fixed-in-time boyishness as well as his innocent hucksterism, and he looks like a (dubiously ethical) million bucks in the splendiferous costumes by Catherine Martin, the director’s wife (who also designed the dizzyingly lavish, champagne-and-confetti-drenched production—she must have been one tired woman by the time shooting ended). But DiCaprio’s physical presence seems almost superfluous in some key scenes, as Maguire’s voice-over narrates the idealistic striver’s actions faster than he can complete them. Our first glimpse of Gatsby, before even the Gershwin-accompanied debut described above, is a shot of his be-ringed hand reaching toward that oft-revisited green light as Nick describes watching his enigmatic neighbor … reach for a green light off a dock. Luhrmann doesn’t just gild the lily, he spray-paints it with glow-in-the-dark sparkles.
Somehow the connection that’s established between Gatsby and Nick—the charismatic gangster and the shy young banker he dubs “old sport”—feels more vital and convincing than the illicit love between Daisy and Gatsby, which, despite Carey Mulligan’s sensitive performance, remains more of a narrative conceit. Perhaps the sweet-faced Mulligan is a little too sensitive for this part—there’s a hard, narcissistic edge to Daisy that we don’t glimpse until very late in the film (which also, disappointingly given Luhrmann’s literalness, misses the chance to work in Gatsby’s observation that “her voice is full of money”). Many of the actors in smaller roles—especially Isla Fisher and Jason Clarke as Tom Buchanan’s working-class mistress and her duped mechanic husband—seem to be straining to fill their limited screen time with the most theatrical, Punch-and-Judy style performances possible. If there’s a discovery in the cast, it’s the Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki, who plays Daisy’s enabling pal Jordan. In the novel, Nick describes the implacable Jordan as looking “like a good illustration, her chin raised a little jauntily, her hair the color of an autumn leaf.” Debicki’s cool, reserved performance captures the stillness of that description—when she’s onscreen there’s a moment of respite from the noise, a sigh of relief that there’s someone in this feverishly over-self-explaining movie we may never understand.
“Class is an aura of confidence that is being sure without being cocky. Class has nothing to do with money. Class never runs scared. It is self-discipline and self-knowledge. It’s the sure-footedness that comes with having proved you can meet life.” ― Ann Landers
“It’s okay. We aren’t in the same class. Just don’t forget that some of us watch the sunset too.” ― S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders
“Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
“The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all … The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands – the ownership and control of their livelihoods – are set at naught, we can have neither men’s rights nor women’s rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.” ― Helen Keller, Rebel Lives: Helen Keller
“History is written by the rich, and so the poor get blamed for everything.” ― Jeffrey D. Sachs
The upper story is modern, bright. This is home to our consciousness and day-to-day reality. But wait! There is more. Descend the stairs with me to the ground floor to an older, darker floor. Imagine it furnished in medieval style. In these rooms, the personal unconscious is connected to cultural, mythic images that still influence today's thinking and social mores.
Absolutely brilliant material. Learning so much from reading your DreamWeaver's Corner. I am reblogging. Going to take my mini dissertation with me. Thank you for your insight and for sharing it with all of us. Love this post especially. The House is kind of scary but it is worth the journey into the collective unconscious. Very Cool. jk the secret keeper
I add this as something that I wrote on the blog site where I follow On The Plum Tree & DreamWeaver's Corner & all the other special creative treats one finds there...DreamWeaver's Corner: Imagine the Psyche is like a House What is hiding in the cavern of dusty decaying remnants of the unconscious? We join with the collective which must have been around since the beginning of time. So the wisdom that is contained within the darkness must be infinite also. Our life must have added to the collective, bringing in a freshness to mix amongst the remnants of the infinite. All our lives are connected to this place in the farthest reaches of this ancient enclosure. Is it where the dark feeds and re-energizes? And when nightmares frighten us. They resurrect from this darkness and feed our sleeping minds with their collective pieces of memory or symbols.
This may seem like a strange question. The collective is the unconscious and is joined as one unconscious. Then theoretically my nightmares or life experiences that are stored away in my unconscious join the collective unconscious. Blending all unconsciousness into the one, the collective. So when I dream, my soul is drawing on the symbols accumulated form everyone's unconscious. Does this mean the collective unconscious assimilates all perceptions? That they are converted into symbols so that all can draw from the collective unconscious contributed to by all in the conscious world? All experience is eventually converted and stored in the unconscious and filtered back into the collective unconscious.
So, I conclude this dialectic that we are all connected through the collective unconscious. All experience that is stored away eventually ends up as symbols of the collective unconscious. The symbols in our dreams which our souls bring forth to the conscious mind which we can choose to analyze, will enable us to communicate with the soul. By doing this it enables us to communicate with the collective unconscious. Is this too convoluted or have I understood how this tentatively works?
If I have gone too far or seem too out there just say so. My mind gets way too analytical. The point is to connect to the collective unconscious and the symbols stored there in order that we may communicate with the soul and, also, to release the darkness that haunts us. Lastly, to be able to release the mess that has accumulated and is preventing us from releasing our emotions through feelings. When this is done we will be freeing our self to experience life more fully and actually feel life.
I do not expect you to answer this but i think I wrote my way through understanding some of what you have been writing in your DreamWeaver's Corner.
Thank you for such a profound way of describing how one should see the layers that lead to the collective unconscious. Absolutely Brilliant Niamh. I think I am getting it. Now I just need to allow my soul to bring to me the symbols. I feel she is beginning to do that. I want to understand and be able to release my emotions through my feeling them. It would be such a freedom to be able to express them freely again, the way I did as a child before those around me shut me down along with my emotions.
That was a catharsis of sorts, more mental than emotional but a little of that also. Once again, TY Niamh. Mine blowing material. :-) jk
One Must Be A Seer
Created By Jennifer Kiley
Rewritten Material by J. Kiley
Illustrated by j. kiley
Created 04.20.13
Posted 04.20.13
I am borrowing the following poem by Arthur Rimbaud from a post I reblogged from on the plum tree. The following is an excerpt from the first post of the series, written by Niamh Clune: “Each Wednesday, I want to feature a rotation of different poets/writers writing about poetry…why they like a particular poem, new discoveries, (could be you) a little analysis.” Something to look forward to every Wednesday.
Now I present the poem that I could not resist. And I include a revised version of my comment. If you wish to see the post and comments in full go to Wednesday On The Plum Tree: In the Sandbox with Dr. Ampat Koshy. The post is brilliant and there is much to learn. I have added a few more intriguing aspects of Arthur Rimbaud’s life and something he wrote in a letter which should captivate your interest, I hope. This started out being a short posting of a poem from a poet I did not know very well but knew of and I had no idea what I would uncover from investigating his life. Find out what I discovered. I really would have enjoyed his company even during those difficult years or should I say especially during those difficult years.
First written on: April 17, 2013 (rewritten April 19th, 2013)
What a beautiful poem with what appears to me as a solemn ending. Such description, so alive and flowing smoothly off the tongue in the reading of them out loud. Rimbaud has conveyed to us such a peaceful image surrounded by natures beauty. Fully expecting the tranquility to be a story told of the living, for that is what surrounds the soldier. But as I stated, the ending is sad. The napping is permanent. The feelings elicited from the poem are delightful until the reader approaches toward the end. Then one is overcome with the unexpected and brought into a reality not predicted at the start.
This is a perfect choice to begin instructions. To be able to write in this way one needs to hone one’s ability of perceiving more closely one’s surroundings and be able to describe them in a more than ordinary way. I am impressed. To write like Arthur Rimbaud would be a great feat. Adjectives are not always my strongest area. This poem by Rimbaud has been revealing and given me something to work on. I am moved by the words of Arthur Rimbaud.
I am into writing for the purpose of making films but of another kind, not that of using poetry but of the use of a written script of dialogue. But I can only see using poetry in a film if one were doing what some would call a poetry slam and wanted to engage the body in the rhythm of the words as they were being created and spoken simultaneously.
But that is a different medium than the art of writing the words down for the purpose of an individual experience that you may or may not share in a reading or posting where other can observe and read your works. I like to hear what poetry I have written out loud, usually to myself, to hear how it sounds and to pick up on the rhythms and sometimes rhymes of the lines as they are spoken.
But I like writing of most any kind. Using words to express what I have ruminating in my mind. It is important to me to convey those words onto a surface so they can be read. Hopefully, the words will mean something and carry some significance, if only to myself. I encourage anyone to write who feels it in their soul or to express their soul through any form of art they feel most drawn into. Just express yourself. It is essential. It is LIFE. jk the secret keeper
“When you walk to the edge of all the light you have and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown, you must believe that one of two things will happen. There will be something solid for you to stand upon or you will be taught to fly.” ― Patrick Overton
“One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.” ― Jiddu Krishnamurti
“A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“The dark dangerous forest is still there, my friends. Beyond the space of the astronauts and the astronomers, beyond the dark, tangled regions of Freudian and Jungian psychiatry, beyond the dubious psi-realms of Dr. Rhine, beyond the areas policed by the commissars and priests and motivations-research men, far, far beyond the mad, beat, half-hysterical laughter… the utterly unknown still is and the eerie and ghostly lurk, as much wrapped in mystery as ever.” ― Fritz Leiber
“That illusion of a world so shaped that it echoes every groan, of human beings so tied together by common needs and fears that a twitch at one wrist jerks another, where however strange your experience other people have had it too, where however far you travel in your own mind someone has been there before you – - is all an illusion. We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds’ feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable.” ― Virginia Woolf, On Being Ill
“Progress had not invaded, science had not enlightened, the little hamlet of Pieuvrot, in Brittany. They were a simple, ignorant, superstitious set who lived there, and the luxuries of civilization were known to them as little as its learning. They toiled hard all the week on the ungrateful soil that yielded them but a bare subsistence in return; they went regularly to mass in the little rock-set chapel on Sundays and saint’s days; believed implicitly all that monsieur le cure said to them, and many things which he did not say; and they took all the unknown, not as magnificent but as diabolical” ― Eliza Lynn Linton
“Even just seconds ahead is unknown; even just seconds after is open to infinite possibilities.” ― Mehmet Murat ildan
When film critic Roger Ebert lost his lower jaw to cancer, he lost the ability to eat and speak. But he did not lose his voice. In this moving talk from TED2011, Roger Ebert and his wife, Chaz, with friends Dean Ornish and John Hunter, come together to tell his remarkable story.
“Life Itself: A Memoir” Excerpts from Roger Ebert’s Book:
“I was born inside the movie of my life. The visuals were before me, the audio surrounded me, the plot unfolded inevitably but not necessarily. I don’t remember how I got into the movie, but it continues to entertain me.”
“I got the feeling I sometimes have when reality realigns itself. It’s a tingling sensation moving like a wave through my body. I know the feeling precisely.”
“I read endlessly…one book led randomly to another. The great influence was Thomas Wolfe, who burned with the need to be a great novelist, and I burned in sympathy. I felt that if I could write like him, I would have nothing more to learn.”
“…the most useful advice I have ever received as a writer: ‘One, don’t wait for inspiration, just start the damn thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the end. How do you know how the story should begin until you find out where it’s going?”
…the writing process is mostly an unconscious act of mesmerism by finding the purpose and doing it because you love it: “When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all sorts seem to share: In doing something I enjoy and am expert at, deliberate thought falls aside and it is all just there. I think of the next word no more than the composer thinks of the next note.”
“My blog became my voice, my outlet, my ‘social media’ in a way I couldn’t have dreamed of. Into it I poured my regrets, desires, and memories…I didn’t intend for it to drift into autobiography, but in blogging there is a tidal drift that pushes you that way…first-person writing, and I’ve always written that way. How can a movie review be written in the third person…If it isn’t subjective, there’s something false about it.”
“The blog let loose the flood of memories…told…I should write my memoirs…It was the blog that taught me how. It pushed me into first-person confession, it insisted on the personal…Some of these words…first appeared in blog forms… They come pouring forth in a flood of relief.”
“…Movies are hardly ever about what they seem to be about. Look at a movie that a lot of people love, and you will find something profound…”
“…as a young boy I am awed by people who take the risks of performance. I become their advocate and find myself in sympathy.”
“What’s sad about not eating is the experience…The loss of dining, not the loss of food…The jokes, gossip, laughs, arguments, and memories I miss. I ran in crowds where anyone was likely to start reciting poetry on a moment’s notice. Me too. But not me anymore. So yes, it’s sad. Maybe that’s why writing has become so important to me. You don’t realize it, but we’re at dinner right now.”
Relationship with mortality: “We’re all dying in increments.”
QUOTATIONS on WRITING:
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ― Maya Angelou
“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” ― Madeleine L’Engle
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” ― Anaïs Nin
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” ― Robert Frost
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”
― Henry David Thoreau
“Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.” ― Neil Gaiman
“We live and breathe words. …. It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt–I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted–and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.” ― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince
“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.” ― Virginia Woolf
“Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences.” ― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
“You can make anything by writing.” ― C.S. Lewis
“This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It’s that easy, and that hard.” ― Neil Gaiman
“Make up a story… For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul.” ― Toni Morrison, The Nobel Lecture In Literature, 1993
“If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it.” ― Anaïs Nin
“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” ― John Steinbeck
“I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.” ― James A. Michener
“Write what should not be forgotten.” ― Isabel Allende
“Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.” ― Jules Renard
“Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.” ― Hermann Hesse
“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him.” ― Dylan Thomas
“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.” ― Carl Sagan
“There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.” ― Frank Herbert
“When you’re lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you’ve just wandered off the path, that you’ll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it’s time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don’t even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert
The Non-Sense: Part 1
at the beginning of time there was total blackness if you follow the creation story and on one of the days it was said: “let there be light & there was light.” now i know that in the bible they are technically speaking about actual light. you know, turning on a switch which then turns on the light, providing someone paid the electric bill. But then I don’t think there were corporations way back then. Or did they pay off those in High Command so they would eventually be able to announce that they have actually been controlling the single universe since the beginning of their designated recording of the beginning of time. this is what you call black humour. don’t be too sensitive about it. I really believe that I am trying to be funny. How can you be serious about the creationist theory and believe that man walked with dinosaurs only 6000 years ago. Now that is funny to really take those figures seriously. The world is filled with two much blackness for having only been around for such a short period of time. None of the things that happened in the Universe could have happened that rapidly. Let’s get serious. The Devil was kicked out of Heaven and descended to Earth. He went by the name of Lucifer. He wasn’t such a bad guy. After all it was god’s best friend. They had a fight and Lucifer supposedly lost so Earth was his interim designation. All Hell broke loss. What was going on in Heaven? Why were people’s hearts filled with such torment & blackness. What the hell did they do to deserve such wrath. Why create animosity & strife developing into wars and killing and bloodshed.
The Garden of Eden. Now that must have been one cool suppressed group of people. They didn’t have knowledge. Does that mean no wisdom? Do they go together. What about Lilith? Did she lead Eve astray or was it the snake taking the fall. His legs were stolen. Who took them? That wasn’t very funny. Now by now there are probably some who are taking offense to the story I am writing. But it is just my way of creating an alternative to all the other alternatives about the creation of the world , the universe, god, the big bang theory. You probably wondered when I would get to that. The Universe exploded out of nothingness into something. Logically, as Spock would say, “that is improbable and totally impossible.” And what about the edges of the Universe or the possibilities that there are multiverses spread out all over the place into infinite space. How far does that go? How can anything be infinite? It expands and expands like a balloon that never explodes. But if there really was a Big Bang, then something did explode. I am in total control of my faculties but find that non-sense is necessary to find any common sense to explain any of what this universe is or was or will be. Otherwise, it would make us all mad just like the hatter & wonderland would seem like a real place and earth totally made up. This has been a display of true non-sense that has some sense but not enough sense to make sense. Trying to understand the dimensions of Stephen Hawking’s brain or Einstein’s theory of relativity is enough to make the world inversely implode and then there would remain no-sense for making any sense out of anything at all. When you see the world in darkness, it feels like all is lost and gravity is pulling us to the center of the universe. Is the universe shaped in such a way that there actually is the possibility that it even has a center. If it did would there be a chocolate covered cherry waiting for everyone that exists in the entire universe to enjoy as a treat.
Niamh Clune’s poem makes sense.(Under — Comment #6 1st line: “It is easy to believe…”) What I have written makes no sense but I needed to release these words from my brain for it to go back into making some semblance of sense in the near future. How does anyone decipher reality from it’s opposite? And what is realities opposite? That is a $300 billion trillion dollar question. I am asking if there is an answer out there for anything except that matter is vibration, frequency & energy(that you Nikola Tesla) but I do not think the last word is the right word but I found it and corrected it. Matter is actually vibration at a certain acceleration which gives it form & we all live within the hallucination of the imagination of someone sitting out in space having one hell of a nightmare with fringes of pleasant fun & loving thoughts. When they sneeze it causes for the symptoms of climate change. When they cry in their sleep, it rains & it may cause tornadoes or hurricanes or tsunamis. We all live in someone else’s imagination who is in a coma from being in a crash with a star in the outer galaxy of the alternate universe parallel to the one we do not exist in now. So all of this that I have written has no baring on madness or fantasy or reality. It just is what it is and nothing more.
@-;– jk the secret keeper
Now seriously, in response to Niamh Clune’s poem. It is quite serious and poses some extremely important points. To believe that there was light that came out of the darkness of the Universe before the Big Bang Theory is an unfathomable thought until you look around at now and see that there is light. But there is also blackness that intrudes upon most of our lives. It causes us pain and wonder as to why we all must feel such pain. Niamh has a way in her writing to explore and to reach the center of thought or idea. In this instance, she explores the vulnerability of our heart. The ease in which it can be broken. The struggles we must pass through to make it through this life we have been given. She is so brilliant in her expression of the places between living and dying. I want to ask why death? If we are given the gift of life why steal it away from us with something so unknown and fearful as Death. It seems a cruel joke.
Life seems at times to be a cruel joke. There is so much violence. I don’t mind the mystery of life but why the punishment. We are given Will, Purpose, Power and Love but it all gets rather jumbled up as we live those lives that we are given. Art is a way to sort out that jumbled up mess so that we are able to make an attempt to sort it all out. The points in Niamh’s poem first sets off the non-sense reaction in me b/c it makes me aware of the difficulty that life really is and then I find the seriousness & try to respond to her poem’s point on that & it all seems like we have had a majorly sadistic joke played on all of us. We just must hope that we find people who we are able to love and who will love us and will get our sense of humour and get us being somewhat fucked up at times. We do need friends to make it through. We may need our privacy and the wish that someday having reality tv fail once and for all and be gone with it.
We need Will, Purpose, Power and Love. The Will to live. To find a Purpose to want to stay alive. The Power to survive and actually live out our lives. And Love, which I feel is the most important of all in the Universe. And To have Love and give Love is the greatest gift of all. jk ps. I have total respect for Niamh Clune’s writing. Why it set off the need in me to let loose with a tirade of unfiltered goofing is probably due to the intense seriousness of the subject of her poem. It is so good that my nervous system needed a release before I could get to the core of the seriousness in myself in response to the seriousness of the words and thoughts she expresses in her poem. I do hope that she will understand what I was doing. It was to show the non-sense of most of what life can be & also what seriousness there is throughout life that we need relief from it at times. It is a need to find relief. jk the secret keeper @>-;–
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
Hannah Harrington
“He took his pain and turned it into something beautiful. Into something that people connect to. And that’s what good music does. It speaks to you. It changes you.”
― Hannah Harrington, Saving June
“A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless he gets his facts right, his imagination will lead him into all kinds of nonsense, and the facts he is most likely to get right are the facts of his own experience.” ― W. Somerset Maugham
“Artists exist to show us the world. So do windows. ” ― Jarod Kintz
“The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”
― C.G. Jung
“What do you think an artist is? …he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.”
― Pablo Picasso
“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.” — Dr. Seuss
Flannery O’Connor
“Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.”
― Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
“Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.” — Dr. Seuss
“You’re mind is working at its best when you’re being paranoid.
You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation
at high speed with total clarity.” ― Banksy, Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” — Dr. Seuss
“Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story
“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” — Dr. Seuss
“An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.” — Dr. Seuss
“Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.”
― Alice Walker
“If you never did, you should. These things are fun and fun is good!”
– Dr. Seuss
“The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.”
― Pablo Picasso
“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”
– Dr. Seuss
“There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”
― Vincent van Gogh
Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So. . . get on your way.
– Dr. Seuss
“Art without emotion its like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag.” ― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak
“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” — Dr. Seuss
“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
“I meant what I said, and I said what I meant.
An elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent.”
– Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches the Egg
“When I was a child my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk, you’ll be the pope.’ Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.”
― Pablo Picasso
“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
– Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears a Who
“We have art in order not to die of the truth.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You’re on your own.
And you know what you know.
And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go….”
– Dr. Seuss, Oh! The Places You’ll Go!
“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him.”
― Dylan Thomas
“Step with care and great tact
And remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act
Just never forget to be dexterous and deft
And never mix up your right foot with your left.
– Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You’ll Go
Leonardo da Vinci
“The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands.”
― Leonardo da Vinci
“Young cat, if you keep your eyes open enough, oh, the stuff you would learn! The most wonderful stuff!” — Dr. Seuss, Seuss-isms
Yann Martel
“If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi
“I am the Lorax, and I’ll yell and I’ll shout for the fine things on earth that are on their way out!” — Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”
― John Keats, Letters of John Keats
“I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” — Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
“It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.”
― Albert Einstein
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” — Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
“LSD was an incredible experience. Not that I’m recommending it for anybody else; but for me it kind of – it hammered home to me that reality was not a fixed thing. That the reality that we saw about us every day was one reality, and a valid one – but that there were others, different perspectives where different things have meaning that were just as valid. That had a profound effect on me.” ― Alan Moore
“Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.” ― Steve Jobs
“Objects and their functions no longer had any significance. All I perceived was perception itself, the hell of forms and figures devoid of human emotion and detached from the reality of my unreal environment. I was an instrument in a virtual world that constantly renewed its own meaningless image in a living world that was itself perceived outside of nature. And since the appearance of things was no longer definitive but limitless, this paradisiacal awareness freed me from the reality external to myself. The fire and the rose, as it were, became one.” ― Federico Fellini
I laugh inside after I have been terribly angry something that after careful consideration is actually rather silly or foolish. But I have a difficukt time allowing the other person I am with to see that I am afterall not so angry at all just stubborn. Haven’t you had the silliest of arguments that hold no major significance and probably never should have happened at all. Sometimes they turn out to make absolutely no sense at all.
I think seeing people do unusual things with their bodies that aren’t meant to be done at all. For an example, going to sit down, thinking that your chair is right behind you but you misjudged exactly where you were in the room and you end up almost sitting on the floor. It wouldn’t be funny if you actually landed on the floor. What makes it funny is what you do with your body to prevent yourself from actually having your bum reach the floor in the end.
In the days we live in now, it is quite often that you get to see strange things happen around cell phones or mobile phones. Texting is one offender. Watching a person so absorbed in typing out a text that they actually walk into the fountain in a mall or into a pole and nearly knock themselves over. Not so funny in a car though.
I find jokes being told in the form of stories rather make me laugh harder as we go along and then the hilarity at the end that brings everything to a culmination. British humour, I think is far more hysterical than most any other. I watched a show made in Great Britain titled: “Outnumbered.” It was so brilliantly written and revolves around two quite exhausted parents with three children, one in high school who is in love and may or may not be being bullied but wants to take care of it himself; an almost 5th grader who lies about everything. He makes up stories about his father If that would astound you and he couldn’t tell the truth if he knew what it was. The youngest and most precocious young girl of about 8ish is really quite wonderfully annoying to all the adults. She is the question girl with the most intelligent of responses to every answer one could possibly give her. She doesn’t like her aunt and she makes her life miserable when she visits. The aunt is always trying to buy the childrens affections but none will have any of that especially the girl. She sees right through her and it drives her batty. Highly recommend as the funniest show around today for the whole family but I think it is rather meant for adults.
So on to Bill Hicks next comic relief. It would be so delightful to be able to hear him today. Oh, my what he would think of us all and the devastation of the planet and the climate changing so rapidly, even the thoroughly non-believers have to believe at least a little bit by now. I mean SNOW and ICICLES hanging off of oranges in Southern California. And white as far as you can see. Plus the driving sucks enough in good weather. Can you imagine trying to drive when there is no visibility or snowplows to get that white icy slushy (sh&t) snow off the roads. What a mess. And now Here’s Bill !
Happy Birthday Edgar Allan Poe 01.19.13
b. January 19th, 1809 d. October 7th, 1849
Tell Tale Heart
James Mason Narrates
Animated Version
Post Created by the secret keeper
Posted 01.19.13
TRUE! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why WILL you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How then am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the whole story.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture — a pale blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me my blood ran cold, and so by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye for ever.
Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded — with what caution — with what foresight, with what dissimulation, I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night about midnight I turned the latch of his door and opened it oh, so gently! And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern all closed, closed so that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly, very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man’s sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Ha! would a madman have been so wise as this? And then when my head was well in the room I undid the lantern cautiously — oh, so cautiously — cautiously (for the hinges creaked), I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights, every night just at midnight, but I found the eye always closed, and so it was impossible to do the work, for it was not the old man who vexed me but his Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he had passed the night. So you see he would have been a very profound old man, indeed , to suspect that every night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.
Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch’s minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers, of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was opening the door little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea, and perhaps he heard me, for he moved on the bed suddenly as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back — but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness (for the shutters were close fastened through fear of robbers), and so I knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily.
I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening , and the old man sprang up in the bed, crying out, “Who’s there?”
I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed, listening; just as I have done night after night hearkening to the death watches in the wall.
Presently, I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief — oh, no! It was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt, and pitied him although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself, “It is nothing but the wind in the chimney, it is only a mouse crossing the floor,” or, “It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp.” Yes he has been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions ; but he had found all in vain. ALL IN VAIN, because Death in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel, although he neither saw nor heard, to feel the presence of my head within the room.
When I had waited a long time very patiently without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little — a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it — you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily — until at length a single dim ray like the thread of the spider shot out from the crevice and fell upon the vulture eye.
It was open, wide, wide open, and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness — all a dull blue with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones, but I could see nothing else of the old man’s face or person, for I had directed the ray as if by instinct precisely upon the damned spot.
And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses? now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well too. It was the beating of the old man’s heart. It increased my fury as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.
But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eye. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder, every instant. The old man’s terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment! — do you mark me well? I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me — the sound would be heard by a neighbour! The old man’s hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once — once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done. But for many minutes the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more.
If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence.
I took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly so cunningly, that no human eye — not even his — could have detected anything wrong. There was nothing to wash out — no stain of any kind — no blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that.
When I had made an end of these labours, it was four o’clock — still dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart, — for what had I now to fear? There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a neighbour during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises.
I smiled, — for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search — search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.
The officers were satisfied. My MANNER had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears; but still they sat, and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct : I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definitiveness — until, at length, I found that the noise was NOT within my ears.
No doubt I now grew VERY pale; but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased — and what could I do? It was A LOW, DULL, QUICK SOUND — MUCH SUCH A SOUND AS A WATCH MAKES WHEN ENVELOPED IN COTTON. I gasped for breath, and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly, more vehemently but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why WOULD they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men, but the noise steadily increased. O God! what COULD I do? I foamed — I raved — I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder — louder — louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly , and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! — no, no? They heard! — they suspected! — they KNEW! — they were making a mockery of my horror! — this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! — and now — again — hark! louder! louder! louder! LOUDER! –
“Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed! — tear up the planks! — here, here! — it is the beating of his hideous heart!”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
“NEVERMORE…” Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven
“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
― Edgar Allan Poe
Emotional Investment in Writing
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Post Written by Jennifer Kiley
Created by the secret keeper
Posted 01.16.13
F. Scott Fitzgerald 28 years
F. Scott Fitzgerald echoes Anias Nin’s importance of emotional investment in writing and offers honest advice on the essence of great writing: the following are from letters he wrote to two aspiring writers. The first is to a young writer who is a family friend in her Sophomore year at Radcliffe College and the second letter is to his 15 year old daughter who is just entering high school. He does not hold back. That I think would be unkind to give someone a sense of false hope if they do not have it or if they need to work harder to go deeper inside and bleed for their words and the writing of their stories.
November 9, 1938
Dear Frances:
I’ve read the story carefully and, Frances, I’m afraid the price for doing professional work is a good deal higher than you are prepared to pay at present. You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.
This is the experience of all writers. It was necessary for Dickens to put into Oliver Twist the child’s passionate resentment at being abused and starved that had haunted his whole childhood. Ernest Hemingway’s first stories ‘In Our Time’ went right down to the bottom of all that he had ever felt and known. In ‘This Side of Paradise’ I wrote about a love affair that was still bleeding as fresh as the skin wound on a haemophile.
The amateur, seeing how the professional having learned all that he’ll ever learn about writing can take a trivial thing such as the most superficial reactions of three uncharacterized girls and make it witty and charming — the amateur thinks he or she can do the same. But the amateur can only realize his ability to transfer his emotions to another person by some such desperate and radical expedient as tearing your first tragic love story out of your heart and putting it on pages for people to see.
That, anyhow, is the price of admission. Whether you are prepared to pay it or, whether it coincides or conflicts with your attitude on what is ‘nice’ is something for you to decide. But literature, even light literature, will accept nothing less from the neophyte. It is one of those professions that wants the ‘works.’ You wouldn’t be interested in a soldier who was only a little brave.
In the light of this, it doesn’t seem worthwhile to analyze why this story isn’t saleable but I am too fond of you to kid you along about it, as one tends to do at my age. If you ever decide to tell your stories, no one would be more interested than,
Your old friend,
F. Scott Fitzgerald
P.S. I might say that the writing is smooth and agreeable and some of the pages very apt and charming. You have talent — which is the equivalent of a soldier having the right physical qualifications for entering West Point.
The following is the letter he sent to his 15 year old daughter. He may appear more gentle but he seems to me to be just as direct with her as he is with the college student who is a friend.
Grove Park Inn
Asheville, N.C.
October 20, 1936
Dearest Scottina:
…Don’t be a bit discouraged about your story not being tops. At the same time, I am not going to encourage you about it, because, after all, if you want to get into the big time, you have to have your own fences to jump and learn from experience. Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one. If you have anything to say, anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that nobody has ever found before, so that the thing you have to say and the way of saying it blend as one matter—as indissolubly as if they were conceived together.
Let me preach again for one moment: I mean that what you have felt and thought will by itself invent a new style so that when people talk about style they are always a little astonished at the newness of it, because they think that is only style that they are talking about, when what they are talking about is the attempt to express a new idea with such force that it will have the originality of the thought. It is an awfully lonesome business, and as you know, I never wanted you to go into it, but if you are going into it at all I want you to go into it knowing the sort of things that took me years to learn.
…Nothing any good isn’t hard, and you know you have never been brought up soft, or are you quitting on me suddenly? Darling, you know I love you, and I expect you to live up absolutely to what I laid out for you in the beginning.
Scott
Very inspirational advice worth taking to heart and give one moments of reflection. jk the secret keeper…
