The Inner Valley

"This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing. I will sing while you croak, I will dance over your dirty corpse..." ******* ✎ Excerpt  from 'Trop ic of Cancer'. Henry Miller (New York, 26 December 1891 ~ Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, 7 June 1980).

In bygone days when life's array - The sweet song of the nightingale And maidens' eyes, the rustling woods - Still left a fresh impression on me, When loftiness of feeling, And freedom, glory, love Artistic inspiration So deeply stirred my blood, My times of hope were cast in shade And pleasure dimmed by longing, For it was then an evil genius Began to pay me secret visits. Our meetings were quite dolorous: His smile, his glance mysterious, His venom-filled and caustic sermons Poured frozen poison in my soul. With endless slandering remarks He tempted Providence; He claimed that beauty's but a dream; Felt scorn for inspiration; He had no faith in love or freedom; He looked on life with ridicule- And in the whole of nature He did not wish to praise a single thing. *******   ✍ Aleksandr Serguéyevich Pushkin (Moscow, Russian Empire, 6 June 1799 ~ Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, 10 February 1837). ◙ Artwork: Mikhail Vrubel

This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes As an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. *******   ✍ Yalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (Balkh, Khwarezmian Empire, 30 September 1207 ~ K onya, Sultan ate of  Rum, 17 December 1273). ◙ Artwork: Charles Sims

"As scientific understanding has grown, so our world has become dehumanized. Man feels himself isolated in the cosmos, because he is no longer involved in nature and has lost his emotional “unconscious identity” with natural phenomena. These have slowly lost their symbolic implications. Thunder is no longer the voice of an angry god, nor is lightning his avenging missile. No river contains a spirit, no tree is the life principle of a man, no snake the embodiment of wisdom, no mountain cave the home of a great demon. No voices now speak to man from stones, plants, and animals, nor does he speak to them believing they can hear. His contact with nature has gone, and with it the profound emotional energy that this symbolic connection supplied."  ******* ✍ Carl Gustav Jung (Kesswil, Switzerland, 26 July 1875 ~ Küsnacht, Switzerland, 6 June 1961). ◙ Artwork: George Inness

No Madonna and Child could touch Her tenderness for a son She soon would have to forget .. . The air was heavy with odors of diarrhea, Of unwashed children with washed-out ribs And dried-up bottoms waddling in labored steps Behind blown-empty bellies. Other mothers there Had long ceased to care, but not this one: She held a ghost-smile between her teeth, And in her eyes the memory Of a mother’s pride .. . She had bathed him And rubbed him down with bare palms. She took from their bundle of possessions A broken comb and combed The rust-colored hair left on his skull And then—humming in her eyes—began carefully to part it. In their former life this was perhaps A little daily act of no consequence Before his breakfast and school; now she did it Like putting flowers on a tiny grave. ******* ✍ Chinua Achebe (Ogidi, Nigeria Protectorate, 16 No vember 193 0 ~ Boston, Massachusett s, 21 Mar ch 2013).

Destructivity is the result of an unlived life. What cannot grow up grows down — nails and hairs of the beard into the flesh, unrequited desires calcifying our blood vessels, envy changing into ulcers, sadness into lice, dirt into flies. We are always, in a way, wandering knights; we are always looking for what to fight for and against, whom to hate with a just hatred. This unlived life is like a boiling water pot in our hands which we hurry to put away, and there is no time for anything else, and we are angry at all who sit quietly around the kitchen table and talk about Erich Fromm and that destructivity is the result of an unlived life. ******* ✍ Jaan Kaplinski ( Tartu, Estonia, born 22 January 1941). ◙ Artwork: William Kurelek

Go, my songs, to the lonely and the unsatisfied, Go also to the nerve-racked, go to the enslaved-by-convention, Bear to them my contempt for their oppressors. Go as a great wave of cool water, Bear my contempt of oppressors. Speak against unconscious oppression, Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative, Speak against bonds. Go to the bourgeoise who is dying of her ennuis, Go to the women in suburbs. Go to the hideously wedded, Go to them whose failure is concealed, Go to the unluckily mated, Go to the bought wife, Go to the woman entailed. Go to those who have delicate lust, Go to those whose delicate desires are thwarted, Go like a blight upon the dulness of the world; Go with your edge against this, Strengthen the subtle cords, Bring confidence upon the algae and the tentacles of the soul. Go in a friendly manner, Go with an open speech. Be eager to find new evils and new good, Be against all forms of oppression. Go to those who are thickened with middle age, To those who

The whirlwind will pass: Do thou be silent. And again thou shalt take thy horn Without being late; fear not that thou wilt be late And when overtaking, turn not backward. All that is comprehensible is incomprehensible. Where is the limit to miracles? And one last enjoinment, O my hunter! If on the first day of the hunting Thou shouldst not come upon the quarry, Grieve not— To thee is already destined the quarry! He who knows—searches. He who wins knowledge—achieves. He who has found—is amazed at the ease of the capture. He who has seized—sings hymns of attainment. Rejoice! Rejoice! Rejoice! O thrice-called hunter! ******* ✍ Nicholas Roerich (Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, 9 October 1874 ~ Naggar, Himachal Pradesh, India). ◙ Artwork: 'Guga Chohan. Kuluta' (1931) by Nicholas Roerich.

Longing, and mystery, and delight… as if from the swaying blackness of some slow-motion masquerade onto the dim bridge you came. And night flowed, and silent there floated into its satin streams that black mask’s wolf-like profile and those tender lips of yours. And under the chestnuts, along the canal you passed, luring me askance. What did my heart discern in you, how did you move me so? In your momentary tenderness, or in the changing contour of your shoulders, did I experience a dim sketch of other — irrevocable — encounters? Perhaps romantic pity led you to understand what had set trembling that arrow now piercing through my verse? I know nothing. Strangely the verse vibrates, and in it, an arrow… Perhaps you, still nameless, were the genuine, the awaited one? But sorrow not yet quite cried out perturbed our starry hour. Into the night returned the double fissure of your eyes, eyes not yet illumed. For long? For ever? Far off I wand

She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car. Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor And to win, wetting there, the words, "Good dog! Good dog!" We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction. The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver. As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin And her heart was learning to lie down forever. Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest's bed. We found her twisted and limp but still alive. In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she tried To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears. Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her, Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared. Back home, we found that in the night her frame, Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame Of diarrhoea and had dragged ac

There was a great reckoning. Words flew like stones through windows. She yelled and yelled, like the Angel of Judgment. Then the sun shot up, and a contrail appeared in the morning sky. In the sudden silence, the little room became oddly lonely as he dried her tears. Became like all the other little rooms on earth light finds hard to penetrate. Rooms where people yell and hurt each other. And afterwards feel pain, and loneliness. Uncertainty. The need to comfort. ******* ✍ Raymond Carver (Clatskanie, Oregon, 25 May 193 8 ~ Port Angeles, Washington, 2 August 1988). ◙ Artwork: Edward Hopper

Where once I loved my flesh, That social fellow, Now I want security of bone And cherish the silence of my skeleton. Where once I walked the world Hunting the devil, Now I find the darkness and the void Within my side. First to be good, then to be happy I Worked and prayed. Before the midnight, like the foul fiend, I killed my dear friend. Hope unto hope, dream beyond monstrous dream I sought the world. Now, at the black pitch and midnight of despair, I find it was always here. ******* ✍ Thomas McGrath ( Ransom County, North Dak ota, 20 November 1916 ~ Minneapolis, Minnesota, 20 September 1990). ◙ Artwork: Elliott Daingerfield

A bird once lived in me. A flower traveled in my blood. My heart was once a violin. I loved or didn’t love. But sometimes I was loved. I reveled in them, too: the spring, the hands together, bliss. I say, and so a man should be! Here lies a bird. A flower. A violin. ******* ✍ Juan Gelman (Buenos Aires, 3 May 1930 ~ México D. F., 14 January 2014). * Tra nslated by Robin Myers.  

Your eyes are the homeland O f the tear and the lightning bolt, Silence that speaks, T empests without wind, S ea without waves, jailed birds, Somnolent golden beasts, I mpious topazes like Truth , Autumn in a forest glade W here light sings upon the shoulders O f a tree with leaves like birds . B each that the morning finds A s a constellation of eyes, B asket filled with fruits of fire, L ie that feeds, M irrors of this world, G ateways to the hereafter, Gentle pulse of the sea at noon, M oor, absolute  which blinks. ******* ✍  Octavio Paz ( Mexico City, 31 March 1914 ~ Mexico City, 19 April 1998).   *Translated by Horacio S.   ◙ Artwork: Moïse Kisling *******

"From the moment of my birth, the angels of anxiety, worry, and death stood at my side, followed me out when I played, followed me in the sun of springtime and in the glories of summer." ******* ✍   Edvard Munch   (Ådalsbruk, Løten, Norway, 12 December 1863 ~ Oslo, Norway, 23 January 1944). ◙ Artwork: 'The Sun' (1912) by Edvard Munch.

Everyone is a world, peopled by blind beings in dark commotion against the self the king who rules them. In every soul thousands of souls are trapped, in every world thousands of worlds are hidden and these blind, these underworlds are real and living, though incomplete, as true as I am real. And we kings and princes of the thousand possibilities in us are ourselves servants, trapped in some greater creature, whose self and being we grasp as little as our own superior his superior. Our own feelings have taken the color of their love and death. As when a mighty steamship passes far out, under the horizon, lying in the evening glitter- - And we don’t know about it until the swell reaches us on the shore, first one, then another, and then many which strike and boom until everything has become as before. – Yet everything is different. So we shades are troubled by a strange unease When something tells us that others have gone ahead, That some of the possibilities have been released.   *

" It was Grandfather's and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.” ✍ William Faulkner (New Albany, Mississippi, 25 September 1897 - Byhalia, Mississippi, 6 July 1962). ◙ Artwork: Pieter Claesz

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what's really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse - The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff tha

Free man, you shall forever cherish the vast sea, The sea, that image where you contemplate your soul As everlastingly its mighty waves unroll. Your mind a yawning gulf seasoned as bitterly. You love to plunge into your image to the core, Embracing it with eyes and arms; your very heart Sometimes finds a distraction from its urgent smart In the wild sea's untamable and plaintive roar. Both of you live in darkness and in mystery: Man, who has ever plumbed the far depths of your being? O Sea, who knows your private hidden riches, seeing How strange the secrets you preserve so jealously? And yet for countless ages you have fought each other With hands unsparing and with unforbearing breath, Each an eternal foe to his relentless brother, So avid are you both of slaughter and of death. ******* ✍ Charles Baudelaire (Paris, France, 9 April 1821 ~ Paris, 31 August 1867).   ◙ Artwork: Winslow Homer

A man who cultivates his garden, as Voltaire wished. He who is grateful for the existence of music. He who takes pleasure in tracing an etymology. Two employees who play a silent game of chess in a southern caf é . The potter, premeditating a colour and shape. A typographer setting this page with care, albeit perhaps disliking it. A woman and a man reading out the final tercet of a certain canto. He who strokes a sleeping animal. He who justifies or seeks to justify the wrong done to him. He who is grateful for the existence of Stevenson. He who prefers others to be right. These people, anonymously, are saving the world. *******   ✍  Jorge Luis Borges (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 24 August 1899 ~ Geneva, Switzerland , 14 June 1986).

Boss of all bosses of the universe. Mr. know-it-all, wheeler-dealer, wire-puller, And whatever else you're good at. Go ahead, shuffle your zeros tonight. Dip in ink the comets' tails. Staple the night with starlight. You'd be better off reading coffee dregs, Thumbing the pages of the Farmer's Almanac. But no! You love to put on airs, And cultivate your famous serenity While you sit behind your big desk With zilch in your in-tray, zilch In your out-tray, And all of eternity spread around you. Doesn't it give you the creeps To hear them begging you on their knees, Sputtering endearments, As if you were an inflatable, life-size doll? Tell them to button up and go to bed. Stop pretending you're too busy to take notice. Your hands are empty and so are your eyes. There's nothing to put your signature to, Even if you knew your own name, Or believed the ones I keep inventing, As I scribble this note to you in the dark. ******* ✍ Charles Simic (Belgrade, Yug

Water hollows stone, wind scatters water, stone stops the wind. Water, wind, stone. Wind carves stone, stone's a cup of water, water escapes and is wind. Stone, wind, water. Wind sings in its whirling, water murmurs going by, unmoving stone keeps still. Wind, water, stone. Each is another and no other: crossing and vanishing through their empty names: water, stone, wind. ******* ✍  Octavio Paz ( Mexico City, 31 March 1914 ~ Mexico City, 19 April 1998). ◙ Artwork: Peder Balke