When common objects in this way be come charged with the suggestion of horror, they stimulate the imagination far more than things of unusual appearance; and these bushes, crowding huddled about us, assumed for me in the darkness a bizarre grotesquerie of appearance that lent to them somehow the aspect of purposeful and living creatures. Their very ordinariness, I felt, masked what was malignant and hostile to us.
Interpretation
Common objects can evoke stronger emotions than unusual ones, suggesting hidden dangers beneath their surface.
In this quote, Blackwood reflects on how ordinary objects can take on a sinister quality in the darkness. The familiar can become unsettling when perceived through the lens of fear, stimulating the imagination and suggesting hidden malice in the mundane, thereby altering our perception of the world around us.
In practice
During a horror-themed art exhibit, this quote can be used to discuss the unsettling nature of ordinary objects.
Adventures come to the adventurous, and mysterious things fall in the way of those who, with wonder and imagination, are on the watch for them; but the majority of people go past the doors that are half ajar, thinking them closed, and fail to notice the faint stirrings of the great curtain that hangs ever in the form of appearances between them and the world of causes behind.
The past has no power over the present moment.
Remove the Ego and Avidya (Ignorance) is gone. Look for it, the ego vanishes and the real Self alone remains.
I act as the tongue of you, ... tied in your mouth . . . . in mine it begins to be loosened.
There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means.
I should like to save the Shire, if I could - though there have been times when I thought the inhabitants too stupid and dull for words, and have felt that an earthquake or an invasion of dragons might be good for them. But I don't feel like that now. I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind, safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering more bearable: I shall know that somewhere there is a firm foothold, even if my feet cannot stand there again.
Denunciations of the manipulativeness of advertisers can unfortunately all too easily be turned on their heads into denunciations of the gullibility of consumers. Both are forms of scapegoating, neither accomplishes anything.
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