| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: close to it when he spoke of the city; for instead of describing
any definite structure or building, he dwells only on broad impressions
of vast angles and stone surfaces - surfaces too great to belong
to anything right or proper for this earth, and impious with horrible
images and hieroglyphs. I mention his talk about angles because
it suggests something Wilcox had told me of his awful dreams.
He said that the geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal,
non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions
apart from ours. Now an unlettered seaman felt the same thing
whilst gazing at the terrible reality.
Johansen and his men
Call of Cthulhu |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: well on in years, sits handsomely and naturally in the bow-window
of his age, scanning experience with reverted eye; and chirping and
smiling, communicates the accidents and reads the lesson of his
long career. Opinions are strengthened, indeed, but they are also
weeded out in the course of years. What remains steadily present
to the eye of the retired veteran in his hermitage, what still
ministers to his content, what still quickens his old honest heart
- these are "the real long-lived things" that Whitman tells us to
prefer. Where youth agrees with age, not where they differ, wisdom
lies; and it is when the young disciple finds his heart to beat in
tune with his gray-bearded teacher's that a lesson may be learned.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Poems of William Blake by William Blake: Like a reflection in a glass: like shadows in the water
Like dreams of infants, like a smile upon an infants face.
Like the doves voice, like transient day, like music in the air:
Ah! gentle may I lay me down and gentle rest my head.
And gentle sleep the sleep of death, and gently hear the voice
Of him that walketh in the garden in the evening time.
The Lilly of the valley breathing in the humble grass
Answerd the lovely maid and said: I am a watry weed,
And I am very small and love to dwell in lowly vales:
So weak the gilded butterfly scarce perches on my head
Yet I am visited from heaven and he that smiles on all
Poems of William Blake |
