The Prologue of Henry V by William Shakespeare
Fairy Tales
When speaking to Frodo and Sam about her mirror, the powerful Elf Galadriel (played by Cate Blanchett in the films) remarks
"For this is what your folk would call magic, I believe, though I do not understand clearly what they mean."
In magical realism we find the transformation of the common and the everyday into the awesome and the unreal. It is predominantly an art of surprises. Time exists in a kind of timeless fluidity and the unreal happens as part of reality. Once the reader accepts the fait accompli, the rest follows with logical precision (Angel Flores, Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction. Magical Realism. Ed. Zamora and Faris, p. 113-116).
(On process): "When I sit down to write, which is the essential moment in my life, I am completely alone. . . .Whenever I write a book, I accumulate a lot of documentation. That background material is the most intimate part of my private life. It's a little embarrassing--like being seen in your underwear. . . . It's like the way magicians never tell others how they make a dove come out of a hat. . . . There isn't anything more wonderful than writing when you truly have a book in your grip. That is what I call inspiration. There is a definite state of mind that exists when one is writing that is called inspiration. But that state of mind is not a divine whisper, as the romantics thought. What it is is the perfect correspondence between you and the subject you're working on. When that happens, everything starts to flow by itself. That is the greatest joy one can have, the best moment."
Camille Paglia
"The Magic of Images: Word and Picture in a Media Age"
The World is Too Much With Us
by William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune,
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
More Wordsworth
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Over the course of a 40 year lecturing career, Emerson gave as many 80 lectures a year, and is estimated to have presented about 1500 public lectures, including some in California.
"Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself and you shall have the sufferage of the world. " -- Series I. Self-Reliance
"Slumming"
A poem by Andy Jones from the book Split Stock
Davey Marlin-Jones
Andy's Dad