It was not until the time of our late youth, that we encountered the revolutionary writing style of James Joyce, in his dense, but important novel, “Ulysses,” and received confirmation that the psychological phenomenon of “Stream of Consciousness,” is appropriately included among the many standard, approved behaviors; and can, moreover, be successfully, (in fact, brilliantly) employed in literature.
The subject designation refers to the dynamics of a mode of thought or, in the case of Joyce, a literary style, in which, thoughts, feelings, and reactions are depicted in free and continuous flow. For us, such a Joyce-legitimated dynamic constituted a necessary personal affirmation of the integrity of our self-esteem and our perceived orderly reason. It would appear that throughout our entire contemplative lifetime, most especially, in our later and more reflective years, our thoughts, on occasion, have freely and spontaneously triggered others, albeit, at times, unrelated, except for their experiential, aesthetic, or syllabic (suggestive) causation. Such dynamic, as experienced, is spontaneous and seldom, volitional.
As dedicated writers of essays and poetry, the suggestively triggered phenomenon, on occasion, has led us to romanticized, philosophical, or aesthetic thoughts and images, at times, bordering on the profound or metaphysical, but more often on thoughts of experiential or picturesque subject matter.
A recent and personally notable experience of this contextual phenomenon took place, apparently, in response to our casual sight of an attractive picture of a white-frosted, multi-layered cake in a Kingston, New York, local magazine. Thereafter, looking through our enormous picture windows, we mentally, construed an attractive layer of pristine, white, snow on the surface of the outdoor property and a fanciful image appeared, no doubt triggered by the prior observation of the picture of the described cake. The thought, or consciousness, was of the existence of a multi-layered ground, outside, with a white (frosted?) coating of new fallen, pristine winter snow.
It was, no doubt, our aesthetic inclination that led us to reflexively summon up in our consciousness, an earthly vision of a (cake-like), parallel-layered structure of the earth beneath the snowy (icing) surface each layer of ground separately distinguished by separate, distinct compartmental phenomena. Starting just below the (“icing”) snow, we would see, if it were possible, topsoil with the remains of last season’s grass, now lifeless, brown, and inert. Descending to another layer of the soil (“cake”) we would see an amalgamation (cake filling) of pebbles, bits of dead tree branches and plants, dormant roots, seeds, nascent shoots, and possibly bulbs, patiently resting and awaiting spring and their perennial surface re-generation and verdance.
Going deeper into the darker (chocolate?) and more remote soil, alongside some large rocks we would see open spaces borrowed holes (free-think: Borough Halls?) engineered by little brown, furry critters, curled up, wrapped for needed warmth in their furry tails, a few pregnant, all asleep and still, except for the soft inhalations the occasional nose wrinkle, patiently awaiting the onset of the primavera, warmer weather and the availability of food.
Above the surface of the snowy ground (iced layer cake) stand the stalwart trees, with fiduciary responsibility, in their ( birthday candle-erect) fiduciary guard as the preservative of the earthly cake, as protection against the erosion of its dormant soil (layers) as well as the damaging vicissitudes of unwanted meteorology; they will, deservedly, share the coming verdant season with the wakeful, quickly emerging, woodland critters in their jointly anticipated enactment of the imagined scenario of our momentary stream of consciousness.
–p.
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