Dickens on Childhood and Memory and Happiness

"This may be fancy, though I think the memory of most of us can go farther back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect, may with greater proprietybe said not to have lost the faculty, than to have  acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood.

"I might have a misgiving that I am 'meandering' in stopping to say this, but that it brings me to remark that I build these conclusions, in part upon my own experience of myself; and if it should appear from
anything I may set down in this narrative that I was a child of close observation, or that as a man I have a strong memory of my childhood, I undoubtedly lay claim to both of these characteristics."

--Charles Dickens
-----very early in David Copperfield--

Dream: Face Cut

In last night's dream, I lost a very large 3" x 4" rectangular chunk of skin and flesh to my own kayak paddle and a rogue wave/sudden storm scenario. The visual was quite gruesome with red muscle and yellowish fat exposed to the air and to sight. It didn't really bleed and it didn't hurt that much, and those two aspects helped me inside the dream to realize that I was dreaming and so to wake up. 

My dream-thought as the POV widened so that I could see "myself"? Oh, that will be an ugly scar.

Oh, the chunk came out of the right side of my face, my cheek, so that's more than large, yes?

Teague's "Explanation To A Student"

EXPLANATION TO A STUDENT

Even in Shakespeare, some words mean

what they seem; here water is its ordinary self, dripping

no irony, sloshing waves up the shore,

and when Roderigo wants to drown himself

from sorrow, he means, quite literally drown.

If you do not see a circle floating above the line,

a buoy marking deeper meanings,

notes submerged by ripples of thous and 'zounds,

you may lie on the raft of the surface--

as Roderigo might have, unrequited but still too light

for drowning, or as you would be carried 

from your chair if a friend said, I'd love

some water.  You'd fill her glass with liquid,

tasteless and transparent, not wondering

if she wanted something metaphoric (the boiling point,

viscosity, and surface tension unusually high

for its molecular weight), like tragedy, or love.

When the time comes to navigate 

the shoals inside soliloquies, you'll have to trust

not all words will deceive you.  Not all are false

as water, which you'll remember

Othello calls the dead Desdemona, to explain

why he has killed her, why he would not listen

to her vow she had always been true.

--Alexandra Teague,

from her recent award-winning volume

Mortal Geography.