Tuesday, July 09, 2013

Montaigne on the Brain and I Dream in French



"Je suis un rêveur. Je dois rêver et atteindre les étoiles, et si je manque une étoile puis je prends une poignée de nuages​​."
Mike Tyson

Many cultures attribute prophetic significance to dreams (an example of this can be found in the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis). Others are more skeptical. Aristotle wrote a treatise on dreams 2400 years ago in which he stated that "most so-called prophetic dreams should be classified as coincidences" On Prophesying by Dreams. Aristotle, translated by J. I. Beare,

My dreams mirror me.  Most of the time they look like this:


Sometimes they reflect my sadness over the loss of a quality Network Television program, like Pan Am -late of ABC:


Or, a dream (s) may  have much to do with cautionary tales themed accordingly in devotional readings before night-night.

I made the mistake of reading Michel De Montaigne the French Joseph Epstein whose 'sentences' are bon-bons for the mind.   I read Montaigne on facing my own mortality

Je veux que la mort me trouve plantant mes choux.*


And off I winked all forty






Things were looking mighty mal and so I hit the fast forward REM cycle, remembering this quote from Montaigne



e veux qu'on me voit en ma façon simple, naturelle, et ordinaire, sans étude et artifice; car c'est moi que je peins...Je suis moi-même la matière de mon livre.**

As Dan Savage always says, It gets better! So did the dreams -















*Translation: I want death to find me planting my cabbages.
**
  • Translation: I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself that I portray...I am myself the matter of my book.

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