Robert Hicks, “…Bedroom. Facing Northeast…” (1996)
grounding
a familiar voice
to focus and
take all the lightning
away
— J.S.
“grounding”
Tag: insomnia
This is the Hour of Lead –
cf. magazine advertisement
This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow…
— Emily Dickinson, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes –” (excerpt)
“I have of late turned my thoughts with a very useless earnestness upon past incidents.”
cf. Cincinnati Magazine, 1989 and Lightning : Calvin Company
“My mind is unsettled and my memory confused. I have of late turned my thoughts with a very useless earnestness upon past incidents. I have yet got no command over my thoughts; an unpleasing incident is almost certain to hinder my rest…”
—Johnson’s diary quoted in Boswell’s Life of Johnson
Ghosts appear and fade away…
“A man so afflicted, Sir, must divert distressing thoughts, and not combat with them.”
Talking of constitutional melancholy, he observed, “A man so afflicted, Sir, must divert distressing thoughts, and not combat with them.” BOSWELL: “May not he think them down, Sir?” JOHNSON: “No, Sir. To attempt to THINK THEM DOWN is madness. He should have a lamp constantly burning in his bed-chamber during the night, and if wakefully disturbed, take a book, and read, and compose himself to rest…”
—Boswell’s Life Of Johnson
James McNeill Whistler, Reading in Bed (The Slipper) (1858)
