March 1898
What a strange dream I had last night! I wandered in the warm streets of a port, in the low quarter of some Barcelona or Marseille. The streets were noisome, with their freshly-heaped piles of ordure outside the doors, in the blue shadows of their high roofs. They all led down towards the sea. The gold-spangled sea, seeming as if it had been polished by the sun, could be seen at the end of each thoroughfare, bristling with yard-arms and luminous masts. The implacable blue of the sky shone brilliantly overhead as I wandered through the long, cool and sombre corridors in the emptiness of a deserted district: a quarter which might almost have been dead, abruptly abandoned by seamen and foreigners. I was alone, subjected to the stares of prostitutes seated at their windows or in the doorways, whose eyes seemed to ransack my very soul.
They did not speak to me. Leaning on the sides of tall bay-windows or huddled in doorways, they were silent. Their breasts and arms were bare, bizarrely made up in pink, their eyebrows were darkened, they wore their hair in corkscrew-curls, decorated with paper flowers and metal birds. And they were all exactly alike!
They might have been huge marionettes, or tall mannequin dolls left behind in panic - for I divined that some plague, some frightful epidemic brought from the Orient by sailors, had swept through the town and emptied it of its inhabitants. I was alone with these simulacra of love, abandoned by the men on the doorsteps of the brothels.
I had already been wandering for hours without being able to find a way out of that miserable quarter, obsessed by the fixed and varnished eyes of all those automata, when I was seized by the sudden thought that all these girls were dead, plague-stricken and putrefied by cholera where they stood, in the solitude, beneath their carmine plaster masks... and my entrails were liquefied by cold. In spite of that harrowing chill, I was drawn closer to a motionless girl. I saw that she was indeed wearing a mask... and the girl in the next doorway was also masked... and all of them were horribly alike under their identical crude colouring...
I was alone with the masks, with the masked corpses, worse than the masks... when, all of a sudden, I perceived that beneath the false faces of plaster and cardboard, the eyes of these dead women were alive.
Their vitreous eyes were looking at me...
I woke up with a cry, for in that moment I had recognised all the women. They all had the eyes of Kranile and Willie, of Willie the mime and Kranile the dancer. Every one of the dead women had Kranile's left eye and Willie's right eye... so that every one of them appeared to be squinting.
Am I to be haunted by masks now?
Tags: death dream dead decadence plague masks mask nightmare automata puppets town cholera prostitutes mannequin mannequins marionettes
One of the most deadly causes of destruction of divine destinies is when a leader is failing, but he or she does not know it. Ignorance about your role is a death plot against people's successes.
Israelmore AyivorTags: success knowledge vision death ignorance dead responsibility failure destruction leadership destiny kill food-for-thought leader lead fail destroy ignore leaders divine ignorant leading failing deadly role israelmore-ayivor true-leaders self-leaders true-leader false-leader leads self-leader dream-killers bad-leader death-plot failing-leaders poor-leadership
Some people die and you realize that the only mark they left on earth are the tomb stones under which they lie. The impacts you make on earth should be something worthy to improve lives.
Israelmore AyivorTags: people dreams dead die earth grave food-for-thought legacy graveyard make-a-difference impact cemetary tomb do-something graves israelmore-ayivor make-an-impact tombs tomb-stone
A man without trust might as well be dead.
Robert JordanI do not worship a DEAD and buried Christ at Calvary. I worship a ressurected and LIVING Christ in Heaven! Jesus Christ is alive.
Israelmore AyivorTags: god heaven living dead bible salvation jesus worship save jesus-christ christ alive jehovah messiah god-s-word son-of-god saviour calvary israelmore-ayivor the-word-of-god golgatha golgata my-saviour ressurected true-worship
Man is better off without the confusion and fear of psychic experience and his progress will be faster.' If telepathy ever becomes a possibility he was not sure it would be a good thing, '...for it may put us back in contact with the spirits of the dead and progress does not lie in that direction.
H. Russell WakefieldTags: dead spirit spirits telepathy psychic psychic-powers psychic-abilities
I spend more time with the living, than the dead now.
Jennifer L. HotesTags: grace living dead observation characters-of-four-rubbings four-rubbings
Why the Romans, Father?" I asked him one afternoon.
"Because, my child, they teach us how to bear suffering in a world of injustice where all faith is dead," he answered.
Tags: life lesson pain injustice death faith suffering child dead father roman
Mama wasn't dead...exactly. They all said she was, but when Elma was small, she seen Mama creep into her room at night, half-naked, head all bloodied red like when they found her by the well that day, and Elma reckoned dead just meant pretendin' you couldn't move or breathe until nightfall when you got up and walked around like you was free.
Shannon CelebiTags: freedom death free dead death-and-dying ghosts pretending dead-people death-of-a-loved-one dead-and-gone mama pretending-death
Delay is not a help-mate. The cemetary is full of people who thought they could DO IT tomorrow. Do It Now!
Israelmore AyivorTags: procrastination people dead die excuses burial grave tomorrow graveyard help funeral full cemetary tomb mate do-it delay israelmore-ayivor do-it-now fod-for-thought help-mate start-now tomorrow-never-comes
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