The Inner Valley

“Soon the child’s clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions, and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day, we become seekers.” ******* ✍ Peter Matthiessen (New York City, 22 May 1927 ~ Sagaponack, New York, 5 April 2014). *******  ◙ Jamie Wyet h "Muy pronto el ojo limpio del niño se nubla con ideas y opiniones, preconceptos y abstracciones. El simple ser libre se va incrustando en la pesada armadura del ego. Muchos años más tarde se despierta un instinto que reconoce que un sentido vital del misterio ha sido sustraído. El sol brilla a través de los pinos, y el corazón es penetrado en un momento de belleza o de extraño dolor, como un recuerdo del paraíso. Después de...

there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you. there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I pour whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke and the whores and the bartenders and the grocery clerks never know that he's in there. there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay down, do you want to mess me up? you want to screw up the works? you want to blow my book sales in Europe? there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep. I say, I know that you're there, so don't be sad. then I put him back, but he's singing a little in there, I haven't quite let him die and we sleep together like that with our secret pact and it's nice enough to make a man we...

"The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown."  *******                                                                  René François Ghislain Magritte (Lessines, 21 November 1898 – Bruselas, 15 August 1967)  ◙ The Double Secret (1927)                           *******                                 ...

Look, stranger, on this island now The leaping light for your delight discovers, Stand stable here And silent be, That through the channels of the ear May wander like a river The swaying sound of the sea. Here at a small field's ending pause Where the chalk wall falls to the foam and its tall ledges Oppose the pluck And knock of the tide, And the shingle scrambles after the suck- -ing surf, and a gull lodges A moment on its sheer side. Far off like floating seeds the ships Diverge on urgent voluntary errands, And this full view Indeed may enter And move in memory as now these clouds do, That pass the harbour mirror And all the summer through the water saunter.  ******* Wystan Hugh Auden (York, 21 February 1907 ~ Viena, 29 September 1973)

As soon as the idea of the Deluge had subsided,  A hare stopped in the clover and swaying flowerbells, and said a prayer to the rainbow, through the spider's web. Oh! the precious stones that began to hide, and the flowers that already looked around. In the dirty main street, stalls were set up and boats were hauled toward the sea, high tiered as in old prints. Blood flowed at Blue Beard's, through slaughterhouses, in circuses, where the windows were blanched by God's seal. Blood and milk flowed. Beavers built. 'Mazagrans' smoked in the little bars. In the big glass house, still dripping, children in mourning looked at the marvelous pictures. A door banged; and in the village square the little boy waved his arms, understood by weather vanes and cocks on steeples everywhere, in the bursting shower. Madame *** installed a piano in the Alps. Mass and first communions were celebrated at the hundred thousand altars of the cathedral. Carava...