The induction of psychosis

Psychosis can be thought of as a crisis of over-meaningfulness. Faces in the leaves, words in faces, organisms comprised of clouds. Sometimes people with a vulnerability to superfluous resonance may be tipped into a crisis of significance by the coincidence of signs. Simultaneously reading Leaves of Grass, Ulysses, An Outcast of the Islands, and Swann's Way via DailyLit, I receive an e-mailed page or so of each a day. All (picked more or less randomly) are poetic, descriptive, image-laden. In a random day's segments, there are overlapping tones and moods. Sometimes I couldn't tell you which I'm reading. There is significant overlap in theme and content. A few days ago, Willems lost his canoe to the tide. Today, Stephen Dedalus's ashplant is taken by the tide. The word accoucheur has appeared repeatedly. Since I am not disposed toward psychosis, this is pleasurable, not frightening, not a message urgent to involve me in itself.