You are indebted to you imagination for three-fourths of your importance.
quote by David Garrick
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It Must Be Imagination
by Kenny Loggins & Tom Snow
When the feeling isn't right
They say you see it in a lovers eye
But I'm wide awake tonight
'N I'm looking for a reason why
It doesn't show
Still somehow I know
Tell me that it just ain't so
Say I made the whole thing up
It must be imagination
Why can't I forget it
God, you'd think I'd know better
It must be imagination
Gone completely out of my mind
It must be imagination
Tearin' me apart
'N breakin' my heart
You can say what is real
You can tell me if I'm in a dream
'Cause I know what I feel
But I don't know what to believe
Turn on the night light
Even if it takes us all night
I gotta be sure by daylight
If I've made this whole thing up
It must be imagination
Tell me if I'm right
'Cause it's changing my life
It must be imagination
Everybody knows
There ain't no way to fight it
It must be imagination
Breakin' my heart
'N tearing me apart
If I'm only dreamin'
Then I'm cryin' in my sleep
You should be shakin' me
Why ain't you wakin' me up?
It must be imagination
God I must be losin' my mind
It must be imagination
Does anybody know
Is there anyway to fight it?
It must be imagination
All in my mind, all in my mind
It must be imagination
If you wanna go, I just got to know
It must be imagination
Oooh tell me what's the problem
Why you wanna go on breakin' my heart?
[...] Read more
song performed by Kenny Loggins
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Your Imagination
Lyrics & music: daryl hall
I remember when i used to be the jealous kind
I got over it, now you're taking over my old line
You're caring too much about what i say
You're wondering too much about what i do
And baby, your imagination
Imagination's got the best of you
I ain't doin' nothing that you could really say was wrong
Just one oversight and no that didn't last too long
Listen, you're caring too much about what i say
You're wondering too much about what i do
And baby, your imagination
Imagination's got the best of you
Don't know what you're looking for
What's this thing about "true blue"
You know i ain't no danger boy
You're the one i like to touch, touch you, you
When the mood is right, change the light and the moment's gone
Better turn around, 'cause the light doesn't last too long
You're caring too much about what i say
You're wondering too much about what i do
And baby, your imagination
Imagination's got the best of you
Imagination, your imagination
Imagination, use your imagination.
song performed by Hall & Oates
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About My Imagination
I kept my eyes open and tried to see
The point of what went on in front of me
I kept what moved me, forgot about the rest
And took my young imagination to the acid test
And it was easy then to say what love could do
It's so easy when your world is new
It's been so hard sometimes to find my way
I let my pleasure lead my little world astray
And if I'm truthful I'll say that I was blind
To everything about this life but what I had in mind
And it was easy then to say where love could go
It's so easy when there's so much you don't know
About my imagination, it got me through somehow
Without my imagination, I wouldn't be here now
And it was easy then when love was guaranteed
It's so easy when love is all you need
About my imagination
I'm making this investigation
Into my imagination
According to my computations
We're overdue for a transformation
Or is it my imagination?
I keep my eyes open and try to see
This life in terms of possibility
With so much changing, and changing for the worse
You got to keep your head up, Baby
From the cradle to the hearse
And it was easy then to say where love could go
It's so easy when love is all you know
About my imagination
I'm getting ready for the celebration
I'm bringing my imagination
Taking charge of my elevation
No fear, no trepidation
Register my affirmation
No doubt, no hesitation
People get ready for the embarkation
About my imagination
Calling out across the nation
It's time for some kind of re-dedication
Not talking 'bout just my generation
I'm sending out this invocation
I keep getting these excitations
More light, more love
More truth, and more innovation
Lyrics by Jackson Browne
Music by Jackson Browne, Kevin McCormick, Mark Goldenberg, Mauricio Lewak, Jeff Young
(Swallow Turn Music, ASCAP; Eye Cue Music, ASCAP; Bossypants Music/Songs of Windswept Pacific, BMI; Bateria Music, ASCAP; Glad Brad Music, Inc., ASCAP)
song performed by Jackson Browne
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Go For The Throat (Use Your Own Imagination)
Words and music by rick nielsen
Dont call me baby
Dont call me your inspiration
Dont call me jealous
I dont need you
Dont try to use me
You can use your own imagination
Just a little bit of information before I leave you
You gotta go for the throat (you can use your own imagination)
You gotta do it alone (just a little bit of information)
I am what I am (you can use your own imagination)
When I go for the throat
Dont try to please me
You just give me idle conversation
Doesnt give me any indication or reason
Dont try to use me
You can use your own imagination
Must be some sort of explanation or reason
And I go for the throat (you just give me idle conversation)
And I do it alone (you can use your own imagination)
And I am what I am (must be some sort of explanation)
When I go for the throat
If I say it again would you listen to me
If I shout it this time
If I say it again would you listen to me
If I shout it this time
Get a grip on yourself try to do it in time
Gotta say to yourself
If I say it again would you listen to me
If I shout it this time
I cant stand it no more (you can use your own imagination)
I go for the throat (just a little bit of information)
I do it alone (you just give me idle conversation)
I am what I am (you can use your own imagination)
cause I go for the throat (must be some sort of explanation)
I cant stand it no more (you can use your own imagination)
I am what I am (just a little bit of information)
I do it alone (you just give me idle conversation)
cause I go for the throat (must be some sort of explanation)
I am what I am (just a little bit of information)
I do it alone (you just give me idle conversation)
song performed by Cheap Trick
Added by Lucian Velea
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The Tower
SAILING TO BYZANTIUM
I
THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
-- Those dying generations -- at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out Of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
WHAT shall I do with this absurdity --
O heart, O troubled heart -- this caricature,
Decrepit age that has been tied to me
As to a dog's tail?
Never had I more
Excited, passionate, fantastical
Imagination, nor an ear and eye
That more expected the impossible --
No, not in boyhood when with rod and fly,
Or the humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bulben's back
And had the livelong summer day to spend.
It seems that I must bid the Muse go pack,
Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend
Until imagination, ear and eye,
[...] Read more
poem by William Butler Yeats
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Go For The Throat
Words and music by rick nielsen
Don't call me baby
Don't call me your inspiration
Don't call me jealous
I don't need you
Don't try to use me
You can use your own imagination
Just a little bit of information before i leave you
You gotta go for the throat (you can use your own imagination)
You gotta do it alone (just a little bit of information)
I am what i am (you can use your own imagination)
When i go for the throat
Don't try to please me
You just give me idle conversation
Doesn't give me any indication or reason
Don't try to use me
You can use your own imagination
Must be some sort of explanation or reason
And i go for the throat (you just give me idle conversation)
And i do it alone (you can use your own imagination)
And i am what i am (must be some sort of explanation)
When i go for the throat
If i say it again would you listen to me
If i shout it this time
If i say it again would you listen to me
If i shout it this time
Get a grip on yourself try to do it in time
Gotta say to yourself
If i say it again would you listen to me
If i shout it this time
I can't stand it no more (you can use your own imagination)
I go for the throat (just a little bit of information)
I do it alone (you just give me idle conversation)
I am what i am (you can use your own imagination)
'cause i go for the throat (must be some sort of explanation)
I can't stand it no more (you can use your own imagination)
I am what i am (just a little bit of information)
I do it alone (you just give me idle conversation)
'cause i go for the throat (must be some sort of explanation)
I am what i am (just a little bit of information)
I do it alone (you just give me idle conversation)
song performed by Cheap Trick
Added by Lucian Velea
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(Humility Poem) A Nobody
I am nobody.
I keep telling you this.
Why won't you just listen?
I have no importance.
I have made no great discoveries.
Just trust me.
Let someone else make a stand and lead.
Captain please get me my steed.
A horse of a mighty fine breed indeed.
Fast as she can go we're off to to save the world to be.
I am nobody.
I keep telling you this.
Why won't you just listen?
I have no importance.
I have made no great discoveries.
Sir great knight, you have made so many of such wise decisions.
In the past and present.
Why won't you let us follow you to all of our deaths?
I don't desire to be your mistake.
A choice of whose blood to spill.
It will be only my own, I must do this all alone.
I am nobody.
I keep telling you this.
Why won't you just listen?
I have no importance.
I have made no great discoveries.
Let me teach from afar.
Let me never be your fallen star.
A disgraceful man who's got so little to show for all his hard work.
Please don't ask me If you can plaster me all over your tea shirts.
Idol not a single a human being.
Because no one as a individual is that great.
I am nobody.
I keep telling you this.
Why won't you just listen?
I have no importance.
I have made no great discoveries.
Mistakes will be made by both the cowardly and brave.
How far will you go to get entangled in the web we make.
To say I was part of this mans life.
Even if it was lies in which you created.
A once upon a time he was celebrated.
Now he has become just so jaded.
[...] Read more
poem by Ace Of Black Hearts
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A Jeremiad
As the swimmer propelled himself through the watery furrows
His arms thrashing admirably to clear a path
His legs churning admirably to push and be pulled
Into the vaccuum created by his sweeping arms
The cameras followed his course from every conceivable angle
Even-yes, even from below, leaving nothing to the imagination
The TV viewer being denied not a single drop
Not a single breath or gasp for air:
Such coverage is, indeed, admirable-
Nothing is left to the dull imagination:
To the dull imagination, thrashing away behind closed lids.
Nothing at all.
Soon, when there has long been nothing to imagine
When image replaces imagination, entirely,
When 'news' replaces reason entirely
When imagination is replaced entirely by technology
And reality by its virtual version
Imagination will prove an unnecessary, even risky, commodity
Soon the imagination will prove an encumbrance
And be forbidden completely by people with cameras and badges.
But please don't get me wrong, I've a camera myself-
In fact, my best friend is a photographer.
poem by Morgan Michaels
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Literature and Quantum Physics
Mind spoke:
I have been the Driver of all history
for animal and man,
I've fueled Progress,
built cities,
discovered science
literature, poetry
all of this due to me:
Mind.
Imagination Spoke:
You Mind
are not of consequence
without me
Imagination.
Whatever spark might have
fired your brain
came from my fashioning
events in you Mind
to creativity,
to art
for you are merely physical seat
the vehicle,
But I Imagination
am the driver.
Body Spoke:
The two of you have no independent existence,
no living space
without me Body.
I am that temple
which houses you.
I am the physical portal
which interacts with the
world.
Whatever you can see or think Mind
or you Imagination, can imagine
is filtered thorough me Body
and flesh though I am
few doubt my ultimate power.
For surely as you both have your place
but both of you are mental most
and cannot walk or run,
[...] Read more
poem by Lonnie Hicks
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Book Eighth: Retrospect--Love Of Nature Leading To Love Of Man
WHAT sounds are those, Helvellyn, that are heard
Up to thy summit, through the depth of air
Ascending, as if distance had the power
To make the sounds more audible? What crowd
Covers, or sprinkles o'er, yon village green?
Crowd seems it, solitary hill! to thee,
Though but a little family of men,
Shepherds and tillers of the ground--betimes
Assembled with their children and their wives,
And here and there a stranger interspersed.
They hold a rustic fair--a festival,
Such as, on this side now, and now on that,
Repeated through his tributary vales,
Helvellyn, in the silence of his rest,
Sees annually, if clouds towards either ocean
Blown from their favourite resting-place, or mists
Dissolved, have left him an unshrouded head.
Delightful day it is for all who dwell
In this secluded glen, and eagerly
They give it welcome. Long ere heat of noon,
From byre or field the kine were brought; the sheep
Are penned in cotes; the chaffering is begun.
The heifer lows, uneasy at the voice
Of a new master; bleat the flocks aloud.
Booths are there none; a stall or two is here;
A lame man or a blind, the one to beg,
The other to make music; hither, too,
From far, with basket, slung upon her arm,
Of hawker's wares--books, pictures, combs, and pins--
Some aged woman finds her way again,
Year after year, a punctual visitant!
There also stands a speech-maker by rote,
Pulling the strings of his boxed raree-show;
And in the lapse of many years may come
Prouder itinerant, mountebank, or he
Whose wonders in a covered wain lie hid.
But one there is, the loveliest of them all,
Some sweet lass of the valley, looking out
For gains, and who that sees her would not buy?
Fruits of her father's orchard are her wares,
And with the ruddy produce she walks round
Among the crowd, half pleased with, half ashamed
Of, her new office, blushing restlessly.
The children now are rich, for the old to-day
Are generous as the young; and, if content
With looking on, some ancient wedded pair
Sit in the shade together; while they gaze,
'A cheerful smile unbends the wrinkled brow,
The days departed start again to life,
And all the scenes of childhood reappear,
[...] Read more
poem by William Wordsworth
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Book the Second
Thou hearest the Nightingale begin the Song of Spring.
The Lark sitting upon his earthly bed, just as the morn
Apears, listens silent; then springing from the waving Corn-field loud
He leads the Choir of Day! trill, thrill, thrill, trill,
Mounting upon the wings of light into the great Expanse,
Reechoing against the lovely blue & shining heavenly Shell.
His little throat labours with inspiration; every feather
On throat & breast & wings vibrates with the effluence Divine.
All Nature listens silent to him, & the awful Sun
Stands still upon the Mountain looking on this little Bird
With eyes of soft humility & wonder, love & awe.
Then loud from their green covert all the Birds begin their Song:
The Thrush, the Linnet & the Goldfinch, Robin & the Wren
Awake the Sun from his sweet reverie upon the Mountain;
The Nightingale again assays his song, & thro’ the day
And thro’ the night warbles luxuriant, every Bird of Song
Attending his loud harmony with admiration & love.
This is a Vision of the lamentation of Beulah over Ololon.
Thou perceivest the Flowers put forth their precious Odours,
And none can tell how form so small a center comes such sweets,
Forgetting that within that Center Eternity expends
Its ever during doors that Og & Anak fiercely guard.
First, e’er the morning breaks, joy opens in the flowery bosoms,
Joy even to tears, which the
Sun rising dries; first the Wild Thyme
And Meadow-sweet, downy & soft, waving among the reeds,
Light springing on the air, lead the sweet Dance: they wake
The Honeysuckle sleeping on the Oak; the flaunting beauty
Revels along upon the wind; the White-thorn, lovely May,
Opens her many lovely eyes; listening the Rose still sleeps –
None dare to wake her; soon she bursts her crimson curtain’d bed
And comes forth in the majesty of beauty; every Flower,
The Pink, the Jessamine, the Wall-flower, the Carnation,
The Jonquil, the mild Lilly opes her heavens; every Tree
And Flower & Herb soon fill the air with an innumberable Dance,
Yet all in order sweet & lovely. Men are sick with Love.
Such is a Vision of the Lamentation of Beulah over Ololon.
And Milton oft sat upon the Couch of Death, & oft conversed
In vision & dream beatific with the Seven Angels of the Presence:
‘I have turned my back upon these Heavens builded on cruelty.
My Spectre still wandering thro’ them follows my Emanation;
He hunts her footsteps thro’ the snow & the wintry hail & rain.
The idiot Reasoner laughs at the Man of Imagination,
And from laughter proceeds o murder by undervaluing calumny.’
Then Hillel, who is Lucifer, replied over the Couch of Death,
And thus the Seven angels instructed him, & thus they converse:
‘We are not Individuals but States, Combinations of Individuals.
We were Angels of the Divine Presence, & were Druids in Annandale,
Compell’d to combine into Form by Satan, the Spectre of Albion,
[...] Read more
poem by William Blake from Milton (1810)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Imagination
What do you do with yourself
When you see the storm clouds rising
Feeling alone with yourself
As the sun fades away
The memories come to and fro
The trouble is they never want to go
They come never go
Its just your imagination rolling over the past
It can change your mind completely
Its just my imagination running wild and too fats
But I know it wont defeat me
Look into the eyes of medusa
And shell turn your world to stone
Shell tear at your eyes and seduce you
And your soul will be gone
The messages and hidden dreams
Of former lives and lovers never seen
A love never seen
Its just your imagination rolling over the past
It can change your mind completely
Its just my imagination running wild and too fats
But I know it wont defeat me
What do you do with yourself when your lost on some horizon
Taking a hold of yourself
When you know the timings wrong
The memories come to and fro
The trouble is they never want to go
They come never go
Its just your imagination rolling over the past
It can change your mind completely
Its just my imagination running wild and too fats
But I know it wont defeat me
song performed by Erasure
Added by Lucian Velea
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Imagination
I have come to indecision
Someone is pushing me
All the cities, subways, rivers
No direction left for me
I have lost my way home early
I dont care cause I wont stay there
All I hear is this silent whisper
Will you be here again
Imagination takes the shadows away
Everyday Ive been without you
Imagination keeps the shadows away
Everday I stay without you
Too many times, without you
I have seen your eyes in purple
I have seen your eyes in blue
All the flowers, tears and faces
All the days I spent with you
Again and again Ive been escaping
Ive been lost in the dark I fear
Can you hear this silent whisper
Will you be here again
Imagination takes the shadows away
Everyday Ive been without you
Imagination keeps the shadows away
Everday I stay without you
Too many times, without you
Choose and change you say
How can you let this run away
See the storms through your broken window
See the beauty of the falling rain
Everyday Ive been without you
Everyday shadow follows me
Cant you see you left your traces
In too many faces
Imagination takes the shadows away
Everyday Ive been without you
Imagination keeps the shadows away
Everday I stay without you
Too many times, without you
song performed by Xymox
Added by Lucian Velea
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Open Your Eyes
Youve got a great imagination
You carry on in the same old way
No lessons learned from yesterday
Talk of changes lost in pages of paperwork
I believe it...
How can we refuse to see
Ive received it...
What could be our final destiny
I believe that...
Still we go on from day to day
Knowing what could be true
Wish I knew
Wish I knew
Wish I knew
Open your eyes and discover
Youre not the only one
In disguise
Do you wonder
When the change is gonna come?
Open your eyes
Youve got a great imagination
We cast the world, we set the stage
For what could be the darkest age
Short exchanges
From perfect strangers
Well never know
But wish we knew
I believe it...
Its time to face reality
Ive received it...
Questioning the powers that be
I believe it...
Are we too confused to see?
Wish I knew
Wish I knew
Wish I knew
Wish I knew
Open your eyes and discover
Youre not the only one
In disguise
Do you wonder
When the change is gonna come?
Open your eyes
Youve got a great imagination
Open your eyes
Show it
Show it
[gtr]
Wish we knew
I believe it...
[...] Read more
song performed by Yes
Added by Lucian Velea
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Open Your Eyes
Youve got a great imagination
You carry on in the same old way
No lessons learned from yesterday
Talk of changes lost in pages of paperwork
I believe it...
How can we refuse to see
Ive received it...
What could be our final destiny
I believe that...
Still we go on from day to day
Knowing what could be true
Wish I knew
Wish I knew
Wish I knew
Open your eyes and discover
Youre not the only one
In disguise
Do you wonder
When the change is gonna come?
Open your eyes
Youve got a great imagination
We cast the world, we set the stage
For what could be the darkest age
Short exchanges
From perfect strangers
Well never know
But wish we knew
I believe it...
Its time to face reality
Ive received it...
Questioning the powers that be
I believe it...
Are we too confused to see?
Wish I knew
Wish I knew
Wish I knew
Wish I knew
Open your eyes and discover
Youre not the only one
In disguise
Do you wonder
When the change is gonna come?
Open your eyes
Youve got a great imagination
Open your eyes
Show it
Show it
[gtr]
Wish we knew
I believe it...
[...] Read more
song performed by Yes
Added by Lucian Velea
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Let Yourself Be Aware Of Depth
Recognize minimize limits,
From inside and decide...
To reach beyond,
That which divides.
Close your eyes in boundless darkness.
Know all wants and wishes,
Come from this.
Let yourself be aware of depth.
And...
Let your imagination,
Be swept away.
Let yourself be aware of depth.
And...
Let your imagination,
Be swept away.
Recognize minimize limits,
From inside and decide...
To reach beyond,
That which divides.
Let yourself be aware of depth.
And...
Let your imagination,
Be swept away.
Close your eyes in boundless darkness.
Know all wants and wishes,
Come from this.
Let yourself be aware of depth.
And...
Let your imagination,
Be swept away.
Let yourself be aware of depth.
And...
Let your imagination,
Be swept away.
The Earth...
Is part of the Universe.
Let yourself be aware of depth.
From birth...
We come to Earth to nourish.
[...] Read more
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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Les Gens Sans Importance
Paroles et musique : Yves Duteil
(c) 1981 by les ditions de l'critoire
Capo II
Ce sont des gens sans importance
Avec des gestes quotidiens
Qui font renatre l'esprance
Et le bonheur entre leurs mains
Ce sont des gens sans artifices
Qui vous sourient quand ils sont bien
Et vont cacher leurs cicatrices
Parmi les fleurs de leurs jardins
Ils ont le coeur un peu fragile
Et la pudeur de leurs chagrins
Leur donne un doux regard tranquille
Un peu lointain
Ce sont des gens sans importance
Et qui parfois ne disent rien
Mais qui sont l par leur silence
Quand ils sont loin
Moi j'ai le coeur en plein Dcembre
L'ami Pierrot s'en est all
En emportant mes chansons tendres
Et ton pass
Et tous les mots sans importance
Qui rsonnaient dans la maison
Mais qui sont lourds de son absence
Dans ma chanson
C'est peut-tre ceux-l qu'on pense
Quand la mort vient rder pas loin
En emportant notre insouciance
Un beau matin
tous ces gens sans importance
Avec lesquels on est si bien
Qui font renatre l'esprance
Et sans lesquels on n'est plus rien
song performed by Yves Duteil
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Berenice by edgar allan poe
MISERY is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch, -as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness? -from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.
My baptismal name is Egaeus; that of my family I will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the land more time-honored than my gloomy, gray, hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race of visionaries; and in many striking particulars -in the character of the family mansion -in the frescos of the chief saloon -in the tapestries of the dormitories -in the chiselling of some buttresses in the armory -but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings -in the fashion of the library chamber -and, lastly, in the very peculiar nature of the library's contents, there is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief.
The recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber, and with its volumes -of which latter I will say no more. Here died my mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere idleness to say that I had not lived before -that the soul has no previous existence. You deny it? -let us not argue the matter. Convinced myself, I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance of aerial forms -of spiritual and meaning eyes -of sounds, musical yet sad -a remembrance which will not be excluded; a memory like a shadow, vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady; and like a shadow, too, in the impossibility of my getting rid of it while the sunlight of my reason shall exist.
In that chamber was I born. Thus awaking from the long night of what seemed, but was not, nonentity, at once into the very regions of fairy-land -into a palace of imagination -into the wild dominions of monastic thought and erudition -it is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye -that I loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie; but it is singular that as years rolled away, and the noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of my fathers -it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life -wonderful how total an inversion took place in the character of my commonest thought. The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn, -not the material of my every-day existence-but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.
Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal halls. Yet differently we grew -I ill of health, and buried in gloom -she agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy; hers the ramble on the hill-side -mine the studies of the cloister -I living within my own heart, and addicted body and soul to the most intense and painful meditation -she roaming carelessly through life with no thought of the shadows in her path, or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours. Berenice! -I call upon her name -Berenice! -and from the gray ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound! Ah! vividly is her image before me now, as in the early days of her light-heartedness and joy! Oh! gorgeous yet fantastic beauty! Oh! sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim! -Oh! Naiad among its fountains! -and then -then all is mystery and terror, and a tale which should not be told. Disease -a fatal disease -fell like the simoom upon her frame, and, even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of change swept, over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and her character, and, in a manner the most subtle and terrible, disturbing even the identity of her person! Alas! the destroyer came and went, and the victim -where was she, I knew her not -or knew her no longer as Berenice.
Among the numerous train of maladies superinduced by that fatal and primary one which effected a revolution of so horrible a kind in the moral and physical being of my cousin, may be mentioned as the most distressing and obstinate in its nature, a species of epilepsy not unfrequently terminating in trance itself -trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner of recovery was in most instances, startlingly abrupt. In the mean time my own disease -for I have been told that I should call it by no other appelation -my own disease, then, grew rapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel and extraordinary form -hourly and momently gaining vigor -and at length obtaining over me the most incomprehensible ascendancy. This monomania, if I must so term it, consisted in a morbid irritability of those properties of the mind in metaphysical science termed the attentive. It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.
To muse for long unwearied hours with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the margin, or in the topography of a book; to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day, in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry, or upon the door; to lose myself for an entire night in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire; to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower; to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind; to lose all sense of motion or physical existence, by means of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in; -such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to anything like analysis or explanation.
Yet let me not be misapprehended. -The undue, earnest, and morbid attention thus excited by objects in their own nature frivolous, must not be confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common to all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent imagination. It was not even, as might be at first supposed, an extreme condition or exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and different. In the one instance, the dreamer, or enthusiast, being interested by an object usually not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at the conclusion of a day dream often replete with luxury, he finds the incitamentum or first cause of his musings entirely vanished and forgotten. In my case the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming, through the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted and unreal importance. Few deductions, if any, were made; and those few pertinaciously returning in upon the original object as a centre. The meditations were never pleasurable; and, at the termination of the reverie, the first cause, so far from being out of sight, had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing feature of the disease. In a word, the powers of mind more particularly exercised were, with me, as I have said before, the attentive, and are, with the day-dreamer, the speculative.
My books, at this epoch, if they did not actually serve to irritate the disorder, partook, it will be perceived, largely, in their imaginative and inconsequential nature, of the characteristic qualities of the disorder itself. I well remember, among others, the treatise of the noble Italian Coelius Secundus Curio 'de Amplitudine Beati Regni dei'; St. Austin's great work, the 'City of God'; and Tertullian 'de Carne Christi, ' in which the paradoxical sentence 'Mortuus est Dei filius; credible est quia ineptum est: et sepultus resurrexit; certum est quia impossibile est' occupied my undivided time, for many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation.
Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only by trivial things, my reason bore resemblance to that ocean-crag spoken of by Ptolemy Hephestion, which steadily resisting the attacks of human violence, and the fiercer fury of the waters and the winds, trembled only to the touch of the flower called Asphodel. And although, to a careless thinker, it might appear a matter beyond doubt, that the alteration produced by her unhappy malady, in the moral condition of Berenice, would afford me many objects for the exercise of that intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been at some trouble in explaining, yet such was not in any degree the case. In the lucid intervals of my infirmity, her calamity, indeed, gave me pain, and, taking deeply to heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life, I did not fall to ponder frequently and bitterly upon the wonder-working means by which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections partook not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were such as would have occurred, under similar circumstances, to the ordinary mass of mankind. True to its own character, my disorder revelled in the less important but more startling changes wrought in the physical frame of Berenice -in the singular and most appalling distortion of her personal identity.
During the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty, most surely I had never loved her. In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings with me, had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind. Through the gray of the early morning -among the trellised shadows of the forest at noonday -and in the silence of my library at night, she had flitted by my eyes, and I had seen her -not as the living and breathing Berenice, but as the Berenice of a dream -not as a being of the earth, earthy, but as the abstraction of such a being-not as a thing to admire, but to analyze -not as an object of love, but as the theme of the most abstruse although desultory speculation. And now -now I shuddered in her presence, and grew pale at her approach; yet bitterly lamenting her fallen and desolate condition, I called to mind that she had loved me long, and, in an evil moment, I spoke to her of marriage.
And at length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon an afternoon in the winter of the year, -one of those unseasonably warm, calm, and misty days which are the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon*, -I sat, (and sat, as I thought, alone,) in the inner apartment of the library. But uplifting my eyes I saw that Berenice stood before me.
*For as Jove, during the winter season, gives twice seven days of warmth, men have called this clement and temperate time the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon -Simonides.
Was it my own excited imagination -or the misty influence of the atmosphere -or the uncertain twilight of the chamber -or the gray draperies which fell around her figure -that caused in it so vacillating and indistinct an outline? I could not tell. She spoke no word, I -not for worlds could I have uttered a syllable. An icy chill ran through my frame; a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me; a consuming curiosity pervaded my soul; and sinking back upon the chair, I remained for some time breathless and motionless, with my eyes riveted upon her person. Alas! its emaciation was excessive, and not one vestige of the former being, lurked in any single line of the contour. My burning glances at length fell upon the face.
The forehead was high, and very pale, and singularly placid; and the once jetty hair fell partially over it, and overshadowed the hollow temples with innumerable ringlets now of a vivid yellow, and Jarring discordantly, in their fantastic character, with the reigning melancholy of the countenance. The eyes were lifeless, and lustreless, and seemingly pupil-less, and I shrank involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted; and in a smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth of the changed Berenice disclosed themselves slowly to my view. Would to God that I had never beheld them, or that, having done so, I had died!
The shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking up, I found that my cousin had departed from the chamber. But from the disordered chamber of my brain, had not, alas! departed, and would not be driven away, the white and ghastly spectrum of the teeth. Not a speck on their surface -not a shade on their enamel -not an indenture in their edges -but what that period of her smile had sufficed to brand in upon my memory. I saw them now even more unequivocally than I beheld them then. The teeth! -the teeth! -they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury of my monomania, and I struggled in vain against its strange and irresistible influence. In the multiplied objects of the external world I had no thoughts but for the teeth. For these I longed with a phrenzied desire. All other matters and all different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They -they alone were present to the mental eye, and they, in their sole individuality, became the essence of my mental life. I held them in every light. I turned them in every attitude. I surveyed their characteristics. I dwelt upon their peculiarities. I pondered upon their conformation. I mused upon the alteration in their nature. I shuddered as I assigned to them in imagination a sensitive and sentient power, and even when unassisted by the lips, a capability of moral expression. Of Mad'selle Salle it has been well said, 'que tous ses pas etaient des sentiments, ' and of Berenice I more seriously believed que toutes ses dents etaient des idees. Des idees! -ah here was the idiotic thought that destroyed me! Des idees! -ah therefore it was that I coveted them so madly! I felt that their possession could alone ever restore me to peace, in giving me back to reason.
And the evening closed in upon me thus-and then the darkness came, and tarried, and went -and the day again dawned -and the mists of a second night were now gathering around -and still I sat motionless in that solitary room; and still I sat buried in meditation, and still the phantasma of the teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy as, with the most vivid hideous distinctness, it floated about amid the changing lights and shadows of the chamber. At length there broke in upon my dreams a cry as of horror and dismay; and thereunto, after a pause, succeeded the sound of troubled voices, intermingled with many low moanings of sorrow, or of pain. I arose from my seat and, throwing open one of the doors of the library, saw standing out in the antechamber a servant maiden, all in tears, who told me that Berenice was -no more. She had been seized with epilepsy in the early morning, and now, at the closing in of the night, the grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations for the burial were completed.
I found myself sitting in the library, and again sitting there alone. It seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well aware that since the setting of the sun Berenice had been interred. But of that dreary period which intervened I had no positive -at least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was replete with horror -horror more horrible from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record my existence, written all over with dim, and hideous, and unintelligible recollections. I strived to decypher them, but in vain; while ever and anon, like the spirit of a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I had done a deed -what was it? I asked myself the question aloud, and the whispering echoes of the chamber answered me, 'what was it? '
On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near it lay a little box. It was of no remarkable character, and I had seen it frequently before, for it was the property of the family physician; but how came it there, upon my table, and why did I shudder in regarding it? These things were in no manner to be accounted for, and my eyes at length dropped to the open pages of a book, and to a sentence underscored therein. The words were the singular but simple ones of the poet Ebn Zaiat, 'Dicebant mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas.' Why then, as I perused them, did the hairs of my head erect themselves on end, and the blood of my body become congealed within my veins?
There came a light tap at the library door, and pale as the tenant of a tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky, and very low. What said he? -some broken sentences I heard. He told of a wild cry disturbing the silence of the night -of the gathering together of the household-of a search in the direction of the sound; -and then his tones grew thrillingly distinct as he whispered me of a violated grave -of a disfigured body enshrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive!
He pointed to garments; -they were muddy and clotted with gore. I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand; -it was indented with the impress of human nails. He directed my attention to some object against the wall; -I looked at it for some minutes; -it was a spade. With a shriek I bounded to the table, and grasped the box that lay upon it. But I could not force it open; and in my tremor it slipped from my hands, and fell heavily, and burst into pieces; and from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.
poem by Erie Morganmaples
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You Can Do It
(sands / germinaro / wiesman)
Take your shoes off
Let your hair down
Time for you to get away
Dont you worry bout tomorrow
Or youre gonna miss today
When the madness gets you crazy
til youre lookin for a place to hide
And youre thinking
That youll never
Get yourself some peace of mind
But, you can do it, you can do it
You can do it to your hearts delight
Oh, you can do it with your imagination
And you can do it in real life
Feel the magic of the moment
Let your spirit carry you away
Get in touch with, oh
All your feelings
Youd better find out what they have to say
Oh, you can do it, you can do it
You can do it to your hearts delight
Oh, you can do with your imagination
And you can do it in real life
Feeling free as an eagle
Flying homeward
High in the sky
Youll touch the fire of love inside you
That youre lookin to find
But, you can do it, you can do it
You can do it to your hearts delight
Oh, you can do it with your imagination
You can do it in real life
You can do it, you can do it
You can do it to your hearts delight
You can do it with your imagination
And you can do, can do, do it, do it
You can do it, you can do it
You can do it to your hearts delight
You can do it with your imagination
And you can do it, can do it, do it, do it, yeah, yeah
song performed by Dusty Springfield
Added by Lucian Velea
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Unrequited Love
In between another heartache faked.
It can be seen and felt although not faced.
But too proud to admit of unrequited love.
Nothing reciprocated from it can be claim...
But pain!
In between lips unkissed and missed.
With a proclamation of strength...
As tears drip from eyes like a typhoon,
Has hit an unexpected wall of sobs.
Someone has been robbed of a trusting job held.
Remembering the region of the Philippines.
Or the China sea.
And the cyclone winds dramatized...
To validate images created,
To compare with the whirlwind within.
In between another heartache faked.
It can be seen and felt.
But too proud to admit of unrequited love.
Nothing reciprocated from it can be claim...
But pain!
And a typhoon of a whirlwind within,
Begins.
As my imagination drifts,
To the Orient again.
And a typhoon of a whirlwind within,
Begins.
As my imagination drifts,
To the Orient again.
Again.
And a typhoon of a whirlwind within,
Begins.
As my imagination drifts,
To the Orient again.
But...
Too proud am I to admit of,
Unrequited love.
And a typhoon of a whirlwind within,
Begins.
As my imagination drifts,
To the Orient again.
Again.
And a typhoon of a whirlwind within,
Begins.
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poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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