Anatomy of Melancholy, 253-258 — Pt. I, Sec. 2, Mem. III, Subsect. 2 — Of the Force of Imagination

 

A of M Nightmares

Work in progress… Well no progress really. I started this one before Covid-19 hit the US, and for a month now I haven’t managed to force myself to return to it. I finally realized that the poor thing reminded me so viscerally of normalcy that I just couldn’t handle working on it for now. We are all mourning normalcy.
I am listening to crowd-spotting police helicopters circling my suffering Brooklyn neighborhood as I post it here, half-gestated thing that it is, so that I can put memories of normal life behind me for now.
And then I can move on to the next chapter. Oops of course I meant the next subsection🖤 What’s a chapter? 😆

“This we see verified in sleepers, which by reason of humours and concourse of vapours troubling the phantasy, imagine many times absurd and prodigious things, and in such as are troubled with incubus, or witch-ridden (as we call it), if they lie on their backs, they suppose an old woman rides, and sits so hard upon them, that they are almost stifled for want of breath; when there is nothing offends, but a concourse of bad humours, which trouble the phantasy.” (Pt. I, Sec. 2, Mem. III, Subsect. 2 —Passions and Perturbations of the Mind, how they cause Melancholy)

Oh! And does anyone recognize the famous painting I ripped off here? 🦇

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