if there is light
it will find
you.
— Charles Bukowski, from “the harder you try,” The People Look Like Flowers. (Ecco; First Edition edition (March 27, 2007)
Charles Bukowski — The Vale of Soul-Making
Paul Auster — The Vale of Soul-Making
Impossible, I realize, to enter another’s solitude. If it is true that we can ever come to know another human being, even to a small degree, it is only to the extent that he is willing to make himself known. A man will say: I am cold. Or else he will say nothing, and we will see him shivering. Either way, we will know that he is cold. But what of the man who says nothing and does not shiver? Where all is tractable, where all is hermetic and evasive, one can do no more than observe. But whether one can make sense of what he observes is another matter entirely.
— Paul Auster, The Invention of Solitude. (Sun Publishing 1982)
Paul Auster — The Vale of Soul-Making
Mark Strand — The Vale of Soul-Making
And I, tiny being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss.
I wheeled with the stars.
My heart broke loose with the wind
— Mark Strand, from “Pablo Neruda and his passions,” The New Yorker (September 8, 2003)
Mark Strand — The Vale of Soul-Making
John Burroughs — The Vale of Soul-Making
The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is, “Look under foot.” You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the centre of the world.
— John Burroughs, Studies in Nature and Literature (Fredonia Books [NL] July 27, 2002)
Roland Barthes — The Vale of Soul-Making
To know that one does not write for the other, to know that these things I am going to write will never cause me to be loved by the one I love (the other), to know that writing compensates for nothing, sublimates nothing, that it is precisely there where you are not–this is the beginning of writing.
— Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. (Hill and Wang; Second Printing edition June 1, 1979) Originally published 1977.
Roland Barthes — The Vale of Soul-Making
Criss Jami — The Vale of Soul-Making
When a poet digs himself into a hole, he doesn’t climb out. He digs deeper, enjoys the scenery, and comes out the other side enlightened.
― Criss Jami, Venus in Arms. (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform January 23, 2012)
Criss Jami — The Vale of Soul-Making
Janet Frame — The Vale of Soul-Making
There is no past or future. Using tenses to divide time is like making chalk marks on water.
— Janet Frame, Faces in the Water. (The Women’s Press Ltd December 31, 1985)
Janet Frame — The Vale of Soul-Making
E.E. Cummings — The Vale of Soul-Making
if you like my poems let them walk in the evening, a little behind you then people will say “Along this road i saw a princess pass on her way to meet her lover (it was toward nightfall) with tall and ignorant servants.
— E.E. Cummings, “if you like my poems let them,” Etcetera: The Unpublished Poems of E.E. Cummings. […]
E.E. Cummings — The Vale of Soul-Making
Fernando Pessoa — The Vale of Soul-Making
My mysticism is not to try to know. It is to live and not think about it.
— Alberto Caeiro, (Fernando Pessoa), from The Keeper of Sheep, Selected Poems: Fernando Pessoa, trans. Jonathan Griffin (Penguin, 1982)
Fernando Pessoa — The Vale of Soul-Making
Susan Sontag — The Vale of Soul-Making
I don’t feel guilt at being unsociable, though I may sometimes regret it because my loneliness is painful. But when I move into the world, it feels like a moral fall–like seeking love in a whorehouse.
— Susan Sontag, As Consciousness Is Harnessed To Flesh: Journals & Notebooks, 1964 – 1980 (FSG, 2012)
Naked Cities Journal 
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