The border of sane aceo

The border of sane aceo
Originally uploaded by popcornfeet

When I was doing this card I intended it to be linked to the poem - Do not go gentle into that good night - by Dylan Thomas.... and it still is. But as I was working on it, it started to become about the poet as well.

The light....the dark.... either or. Not a whole lot of detail in the middle ground.... A card of extremes.

Countless books have been written and studies done - Oh, the money that must be spent on these studies - to determine if there is a correlation between creativity and madness.

It's hardly a new idea. In 1933 Dylan Thomas published an essay in the South Wales Evening Post entitled "Genius and Madness Akin in the World of Art".

According to what I've read (and I can not find the actual article so I've only been able to read about what he wrote) it discusses that genius (and I assume he is using this to mean genius in the form of creativity) seems to be a double edged sword of sorts.

And that one so 'blessed' is always walking a line.... on one edge of a sharp blade, as it were .... and it is "difficult to differentiate, with any sureness, between insanity and eccentricity". He asserted that "the borderline of insanity is more difficult to trace than the majority of people, comparatively safe within the barriers of their own common-sensibility, can realise."

He's right, you know.... The border of insanity is probably the most difficult barrier to grasp. And what's crazy and what's just eccentric? (Leaving alone that fact that people with money, lots of money, are generally regarded as eccentric and not crazy)

But that line.... that 'when do you cross over to insane line' ...thats a tough one. Ask anyone who's ever been inpatient before who was crazier....the patients? Or the ones on the other side of the locked door?

Do not go gentle into that good night



Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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