The Inner Valley

He offered me a leaf like a hand with fingers. I offered him a hand like a leaf with teeth. He offered me a branch like an arm. I offered him my arm like a branch. He tipped his trunk towards me like a shoulder. I tipped my shoulder to him like a knotted trunk. I could hear his sap quicken, beating like blood. He could hear my blood slacken like rising sap. I passed through him. He passed through me. I remained a solitary tree. He a solitary man. ******* Nichita Stãnescu (Ploieşti, Romania, March 31, 1933 ~  Bucharest, Romania, December 13, 1983) ◙ Artwork: Vincent Van Gogh.

The greatest good is like water:       it benefits all life without being noticed. It flows even to the lowliest places       where no one chooses to be       and so it is very close to the Tao. It settles only in quiet locations. Its deepest heart is always clear. It offers itself with great goodness. It keeps its rhythm as it keeps its promises. It governs tributaries as it governs its people. It adapts to all necessities. It moves at the right moment. It never flaunts its goodness       and so it never attracts any blame. ******* 'Tao Te Ching'. Lao Tzu. Translation by Chao-Hsiu Chen. ◙ Rafał Borcz

Yo quiero ser llorando el hortelano de la tierra que ocupas y estercolas, compañero del alma, tan temprano. Alimentando lluvias, caracolas  y órganos mi dolor sin instrumento, a las desalentadas amapolas daré tu corazón por alimento. Tanto dolor se agrupa en mi costado, que por doler me duele hasta el aliento. Un manotazo duro, un golpe helado, un hachazo invisible y homicida, un empujón brutal te ha derribado. No hay extensión más grande que mi herida, lloro mi desventura y sus conjuntos y siento más tu muerte que mi vida. Ando sobre rastrojos de difuntos,  y sin calor de nadie y sin consuelo voy de mi corazón a mis asuntos. Temprano levantó la muerte el vuelo,  temprano madrugó la madrugada, temprano estás rodando por el suelo. No perdono a la muerte enamorada,  no perdono a la vida desatenta, no perdono a la tierra ni a la nada. En mis manos levanto una tormenta de piedras, rayos y hachas estridentes sedienta de catástrofes y hambrienta. Quiero escar...

"For he is immortal and eternal. Now he is eternal, having no birth; for everyone who has birth will perish. He is unbegotten, having no beginning; for everyone who has a beginning has an end. Since no one rules over him, he has no name; for whoever has a name is the creation of another." ******* The Sophia of Jesus Christ (Nag Hammadi Codices). ◙ George Richmond, "The Creation of Light" (1826).   ******* "Porque él es inmortal y eterno. Y dado que él es eterno, no ha tenido nacimiento, porque todo aquel que ha nacido perecerá. Él es ingénito, no ha tenido un principio; porque todo aquel que ha tenido un principio, tiene también un final. Dado que nadie tiene autoridad sobre él, él no tiene nombre, porque todo aquel que tiene un nombre es la creación de otro." ******* Códices de Nag Hammadi. Códice III:"La Sabiduría de Jesucristo".   ◙ William Blake, "Elohim Creating Adam" (1795-c....

What is to be done, O men of piety? For I do not recognize myself I am neither a Moslem nor a Hindu I am not Christian, Zoroastrian, nor Jew I am neither of the West nor the East Not of the ocean, nor an earthly beast I am neither a natural wonder Nor from the stars yonder Neither flesh of dust, nor wind inspire Nor water in veins, nor made of fire I am neither an earthly carpet, nor gems terrestrial Nor am I confined to Creation, nor the Throne Celestial Not of ancient promises, nor of future prophecy Not of hellish anguish, nor of paradisiacal ecstasy Neither the progeny of Adam, nor Eve Nor of the world of heavenly make-believe My place is the no-place My image is without face Neither of body nor the soul I am of the Divine Whole. *******   ✍ Yalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207-1273): Poems from the Divan-I Shams-I Tabriz, c. 1270 CE ◙ Frede rick Goodall  

“You are alive right this second. That is an amazing thing,”  they told me. When you consider the nearly infinite number of forks in the road that lead to any single person being born, they said, you must be grateful that you’re you at this very second. Think of the enormous number of potential alternate universes where, for example, your great-great-grandparents never meet and you never come to be. Moreover, you have the pleasure of living on a planet where you have evolved to breathe the air, drink the water, and love the warmth of the closest star. You’re connected to the generations through DNA — and, even farther back, to the universe, because every cell in your body was cooked in the hearts of stars. We are star stuff, my dad famously said, and he made me feel that way." ******* Excerpt from "Lessons of Immortality and Mortality From My Father, Carl Sagan" By Sasha Sagan.

“ {...} Acabó de decirlo, cuando Fernanda sintió que un delicado viento de luz le arrancó las sábanas de las manos y las desplegó en toda su amplitud. Amaranta sintió un temblor misterioso en los encajes de sus pollerinas y trató de agarrarse de la sábana para no caer, en el instante en que Remedios, la bella, empezaba a elevarse. Úrsula, ya casi ciega, fue la única que tuvo la serenidad para identificar la naturaleza de aquel viento irreparable, y dejó  las sábanas a merced de la luz, viendo a Remedios, la bella, que le decía adiós con la mano, entre el deslumbrante aleteo de las sábanas que subían con ella, que abandonaban con ella el aire de los escarabajos y las dalias, y que pasaban con ella a través del aire donde terminaban las cuatro de la tarde, y se perdieron con ella para siempre en los altos aires donde no podían alcanzarla ni los más altos pájaros de la memoria”. *******   "Cien años de soledad". Gabriel García Márquez (Aracata, 6 de Marzo de 1927 ~ Mé...

"You may have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation, and so long as the hoop was unbroken, the people flourished. The flowering tree was the living center of the hoop, and the circle of the four quarters nourished it. The east gave peace and light, the south gave warmth, the west gave rain, and the north with its cold and mighty wind gave strength and endurance. This knowledge came to us from the outer world with our religion. Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle. The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a c...

Larga charla con Traveler sobre la locura. Hablando de los sueños, nos dimos cuenta casi al mismo tiempo que ciertas estructuras soñadas serían formas corrientes de locura a poco que continuaran en la vigilia. Soñando nos es dado ejercitar gratis nuestra aptitud para la locura. Sospechamos al mismo tiempo que toda locura es un sueño que se fija. Sabiduría del pueblo: "Es un pobre loco, un soñador..." ******* Julio Cortázar ~ Rayuela, Cap. 80. ◙ Henry Fuseli. "The Shepherd's Dream".

Out, Out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. ******* Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5. William Shakespeare. ◙ Jan Mandijn.

"Master.." a disciple asked Chuang Tzu one day,  "Where did the universe come from? Is there a God? What is the purpose of life? Why is there pain and injustice and suffering? Where do we go after we die?" Chuang Tzu responded: “The true master of life does not labor over life. The true master of fate does not question fate. Use understanding to understand what can be understood with understanding, and then stop.” ******* ◙ Artwork: Zhang Weimin.                                                                                                                                            ******* Verdadero Entendimiento "Maestro....

"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!" ******* Charles Dickens - A Tale of Two Cities. ◙ Mark Thompson ~ Furrow , 2011.                ******* "Es un hecho maravilloso y digno de reflexionar sobre él, que cada uno de los seres humanos es un profundo secreto para los demás. A veces, cuando entro de noche en una ciudad, no puedo menos de pensar que cada una de aquellas casas envueltas en la sombra guarda su propio secreto; que cada una de las habitaciones de cada una de ellas...

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”                                                                      ******* Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (Röken-bei-Lützen, Kingdom of Prussia, 15 October 1844 – Weimar, Saxony, German Empire, 25 August 1900). ◙  Pieter Brueghel . The Triumph of Death, 1562 .                                              ...

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells, Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, - The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires. What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds. ******* Anthem for Doomed Youth. Wilfred Owen (Oswestry, Shropshire, England, 18 March 1893 – Sambre-Oise Canal, France, 4 November 1918).

“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...

Es el amor. Tendré que ocultarme o huir. Crecen los muros de su cárcel, como en un sueño atroz. La hermosa máscara ha cambiado, pero como siempre es la única. ¿De qué me servirán mis talismanes: el ejercicio de las letras, la vaga erudición el aprendizaje de las palabras que usó el áspero Norte para cantar sus mares y sus espadas, la serena amistad, las galería de las bibliotecas las cosas comunes, los hábitos el joven amor de mi madre, la sombra militar de mis muertos, la noche intemporal, el sabor del sueño? Estar contigo o no estar contigo, es la medida de mi tiempo. Ya el cántaro se quiebra sobre la fuente, ya el hombre se levanta a la voz del ave, ya se han oscurecido los que miran por la ventana, pero la sombra no ha traído la paz. Es ya lo se, el amor: la ansiedad y el alivio de oír tu voz, la espera y la memoria el horror de vivir en lo sucesivo. Es el amor con sus mitologías, con su pequeñas magias inútiles. Hay una esquina por la que no me atrevo...

{...} I have never seen an expression as full of wonder as Lou's as he died. His hands were doing the water-flowing 21-form of tai chi. His eyes were wide open. I was holding in my arms the person I loved the most in the world, and talking to him as he died. His heart stopped. He wasn't afraid. I had gotten to walk with him to the end of the world. Life – so beautiful, painful and dazzling – does not get better than that. And death? I believe that the purpose of death is the release of love. At the moment, I have only the greatest happiness and I am so proud of the way he lived and died, of his incredible power and grace. I'm sure he will come to me in my dreams and will seem to be alive again. And I am suddenly standing here by myself stunned and grateful. How strange, exciting and miraculous that we can change each other so much, love each other so much through our words and music and our real lives. ******* November 6, 2013. Laurie Anderson (performance ar...

Abandoné las sombras, las espesas paredes, los ruidos familiares, la amistad de los libros, el tabaco, las plumas, los secos cielorrasos; para salir volando, desesperadamente. Abajo: en la penumbra, las amargas cornisas, las calles desoladas, los faroles sonámbulos, las muertas chimeneas los rumores cansados, desesperadamente. Ya todo era silencio, simuladas catástrofes, grandes charcos de sombra, aguaceros, relámpagos, vagabundos islotes de inestables riberas; pero seguí volando, desesperadamente. Un resplandor desnudo, una luz calcinante se interpuso en mi ruta, me fascinó de muerte, pero logré evadirme de su letal influjo, para seguir volando, desesperadamente. Todavía el destino de mundos fenecidos, desorientó mi vuelo -de sideral constancia- con sus vanas parábolas y sus aureolas falsas; pero seguí volando, desesperadamente. Me oprimía lo fluido, la limpidez maciza, el vacío escarchado, la inaudible distancia, la oquedad insonora, ...

"El diámetro del Aleph sería de dos o tres centímetros, pero el espacio cósmico estaba ahí, sin disminución de tamaño. Cada cosa (la luna del espejo, digamos) era infinitas cosas, porque yo claramente la veía desde todos los puntos del universo. Vi el populoso mar, vi el alba y la tarde, vi las muchedumbres de América, vi una plateada telaraña en el centro de una negra pirámide, vi un laberinto roto (era Londres), vi interminables ojos inmediatos escrutándose en mí como en un espejo, vi todos los espejos del planeta y ninguno me reflejó, vi en un traspatio de la calle Soler las mismas baldosas que hace treinta años vi en el zaguán de una casa en Frey Bentos, vi racimos, nieve, tabaco, vetas de metal, vapor de agua, vi convexos desiertos ecuatoriales y cada uno de sus granos de arena, vi en Inverness a una mujer que no olvidaré, vi la violenta cabellera, el altivo cuerpo, vi un cáncer de pecho, vi un círculo de tierra seca en una vereda, donde antes hubo un árbol, vi ...

“Aún hoy, no tengo la más remota idea del significado de lo que aquellas dos damas italianas cantaban. La verdad.. tampoco quiero saberlo, algunas cosas es mejor que permanezcan sin ser reveladas. Supongo que cantaban sobre algo tan hermoso que no podía expresarse con palabras, y precisamente por eso, hacía que tu corazón doliera. Les aseguro que esas voces te elevaban más alto y más lejos de lo que nadie viviendo en un lugar tan gris se atreviera a soñar. Fue como si un hermoso pájaro hubiese entrado en nuestra monótona jaula y hubiese disuelto aquellos muros. Y por el más breve de los momentos, cada uno de los hombres de Shawshank se sintió libre”. ******* "The Shawshank Redemption". Escrita y dirigida por Frank Darabont, basada en la novela de Stephen King "Rita Hayworth y la redención en Shawshank".   ♫ "Sull'aria... che soave zeffiretto", Acto III de las "Bodas de Fígaro" de Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.